MEET OUR ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Todd Green
Todd Green is the Director of Campus Partnerships at Interfaith America. He is also a Sponsored University Associate at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
He previously served as a religious studies professor at Luther College, where he taught courses on religion and politics, interfaith dialogue, Islam, and Islamophobia. He also directed the international studies program and served as the interim director of the college’s Center for Ethics and Public Engagement. In 2016-2017, he served as a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, where he analyzed and assessed the impact of anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe on countering violent extremism initiatives, refugee and migrant policies, and human rights.
Todd is the author of The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (2nd Edition– Fortress Press, 2019) and Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism (Fortress Press, 2018). He is also the editor of Islam, Immigration, and Identity (MDPI, 2014) and has contributed articles to a variety of peer-reviewed publications, including his article “The Mainstreaming of Islamophobia in US Politics” in the edited volume Breaking Point: Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror (Manchester University Press, 2022).
Dr. Sadaf Jaffer
Dr. Sadaf Jaffer is an educator and activist. She recently completed two terms as mayor of Montgomery Township, New Jersey. In January of 2019, she became the first South Asian woman to serve as mayor of a municipality in New Jersey, and the first Muslim woman to serve as mayor of a municipality in the United States. Jaffer currently serves as Chair of the Inclusion and Equity Committee of Montgomery Township and on the Board of Trustees for the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. She was one of the founding members of Inspiring South Asian American Women (ISAAW), a group dedicated to encouraging civic engagement among South Asian American women in New Jersey. Jaffer earned her bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and obtained her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Khizr Khan
Khizr Khan Is a constitutional rights advocate, Muslim American patriot, and Gold Star parent. With Ghazala Khan, he is a parent of three, Including the late US Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed In 2004 In a suicide explosion In Iraq. Born In Pakistan, Khan attended Harvard Law School and has since practiced law, speciaIizing In commercial civil litigation, electronic discovery, and health privacy law compliance. He became known for his speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, when he held up his pocket US Constitution while rebuking then-Republican nominee Donald Trump for his proposed policies. Since then, Khan has spoken out nationally on religious liberty and minority rights.
Usra Ghazi
Usra Ghazi is current a United States Foreign Service Officer. She previously served as the Director of Policy and Programs at America Indivisible and Senior Fellow at the Religious Freedom Center. Prior to these positions, Usra worked at the US Department of State as the Strategic Designer at the Collaboratory, Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau and as a Policy Advisor at the Office of Religion and Global Affairs. Usra received a Masters of Theological Studies, Religion, Ethics and Politics at the Harvard Divinity School and her BA in religion at DePaul University.
Dr. Homayra ziad
Homayra is a writer, a dreamer, a scholar-activist, and a mother. She is trained as a generalist in classical and modern Islam, with a specialization in Sufism and Indo-Persian textual traditions, and her research explores the creation of religious selfhood and subjectivity and its relationship to language, as well as pre-modern and modern interpretation of the Qur’an. Since receiving her doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University, she has been an educator in multiple contexts and a practitioner of community-engaged teaching and scholarship. At Trinity College, she served on the Community Learning Initiatives advisory committee and guided students in community-based learning in Hartford, CT. At Johns Hopkins, she directs the Program in Islamic Studies and is leading a Wabash grant on community-engaged pedagogy partnering with Dr. Shawntay Stocks at the Center for Social Concern. She also serves as Associate Editor of The Commons, an online monthly where artists, activists, and academics explore the intersection of religion, social justice, and public life. Homayra has twenty years of experience in interreligious education and programming and was founding co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group.