Deepa Kumar is an Indian American scholar and activist. She is a professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is the recipient of the Dallas Smythe award for her engaged scholarship and the Georgina Smith award for her work on gender and race equity. In 2020, she won the Marilyn Sternberg Award for her "key role in developing and leading a contract campaign that culminated in a strike vote and a groundbreaking contract for Rutgers faculty” as president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT. She is the author of more than 75 publications including books, journal articles, book chapters, and articles in independent and mainstream media. She is recognized as a leading scholar on Islamophobia and empire both nationally and internationally. Her book on Islamophobia has been translated into several languages--Arabic, Turkish, Malyalam, Kurdish and Indonesian. Her lecture "Constructing the Terrorist Threat" features in a documentary by the Media Education Foundation. She has been sought out by the media for her expertise in the BBC, The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Telesur, Hurriyat Daily News, Al Jazeera and other national and international news media outlets. Kumar is also affiliated faculty with the Women and Gender Studies Department, the Sociology Department and the Centers for Middle Eastern Studies and Race and Ethnicity.
Writings
Media Representations of Labor
''Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike''
Outside the Box looks at the need for a critical analysis of how labor struggles are presented and packaged by the corporate media—and how this bias can be counteracted—by examining the most successful national strike in recent years by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against the United Parcel Service.
Published in August 2012, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire Kumar makes the case that the Bush administration's "war on terror" ushered in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, after the events of 9/11. She argues that that tragedy did not create the image of the "Muslim enemy," and instead examines the 900-year historic relationship between anti-Muslim racism and the agenda of empire building. Beginning in the eleventh century and the context of the Crusades, Deepa Kumar offers a sweeping historical analysis of the changing views of Islam and Muslims in the West, examining the ways that ruling elites throughout history have used the specter of a "Muslim enemy" to justify their imperial projects.
Danish cartoons
Following the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy which attempted to depict the IslamicProphetMuhammed in a caricatural light, Kumar wrote an article against the publication of the cartoons titled 'Danish Cartoons: Racism Has No Place on the Left', where she argues that the left's criticism of Muslim outrage is actually a form of anti-Muslim racism. Her article was read by tens of thousands and posted on websites around the world. It also attracted criticism, and in response Kumar wrote another article in the Monthly Review, titled "Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics".
Green Scare
Kumar coined the term “Green Scare” to talk about the process of fear mongering analogous to the “Red Scare” of the McCarthyite period. This was in response to the media portrayal of the "homegrown threat" of Muslim Americans after a 2009 small increase in the number of Muslim Americans expressing support for extremist Islamists or carrying out attacks while she note that "there has been a steady and dramatic decline since 2004, with only a slight increase in this overall trend in 2009.”
Political Islam
Kumar takes a historical approach to her analysis of the parties of political Islam. She states that Islamist parties have risen to prominence over the last three decades of the 20th century for various reasons: “the active role played by the U.S. in posing Islam and political Islam as an alternative to secular nationalism and the left; persistent imperial intervention and domination; internal weakness that led to the decline of secular nationalist and various left parties, creating an ideological vacuum that Islamists were able to occupy; economic crises and its exacerbation under the neoliberal era, which present an economic opening for Islamists and their charitable networks.” Kumar argues that Muslim majority societies do not automatically produce religious political parties but that they are the outgrowth of particular historical factors. She argues that progressives should view these parties, when they oppose imperialist, as potentially deserving support of the left. She gives the example of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which with the popular support from Lebanese people fought back against Israel's invasion in 2006. But she says that this support should be limited and context-based stating that "we often find that Islamist groups are self-serving entities that are not principled anti-imperialists," and are not absolved of criticisms on reactionary, anti-feminist, or anti-gay political positions they may hold. Kumar has criticized the automatic designation of Islamist groups like Hamas as Foreign Terrorist Organizations noting that it is a political party that has the support of Palestinians because it has taken up "the mantle of national resistance against Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands." While she critiques its "reactionary" politics and attitudes towards women as well as its policing of "immorality," she points out that it came to power through generally recognized free and fair elections in 2006. She argues that it is for the people of Palestine to decide who should govern them, not Israel or the US.
