Faculty

Nora Fisher Onar is assistant professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco. Her research interests include the theory and practice of international relations, foreign policy analysis, comparative area studies (Turkey; Middle East; Europe), political ideologies, gender, and history/memory. She received her doctorate from Oxford and holds master’s and undergraduate degrees from Johns Hopkins (SAIS) and Georgetown universities, respectively. She speaks five languages, has...

Lindsay Gifford is an Assistant Professor of International Studies and Anthropology, and she is currently the faculty adviser for the culture, societies and values track for the International Studies major. Prof. Gifford holds a PhD in Anthropology from Boston University, a BA in Anthropology from CSU Northridge, and is a graduate of Middlebury College’s Arabic Language School, as well as Damascus University’s Arabic language program in Syria. She was a Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow for...

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, the Mae and Benjamin Swig Professor in Jewish Studies and the founding Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, has been at USF since 2007. An educator for more than two decades, his primary academic interest is the intersection between identity formation, social justice, and marginalized groups. Aaron completed his PhD in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the History of Religions,...

Aysha Hidayatullah is Associate Professor of Islamic studies and teaches undergraduate courses on Islam, gender, race, and ethics. She received her MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her BA in Women's Studies from Emory University. She began teaching at the University of San Francisco in 2008. Her research interests include feminist exegesis of the Qur'an; representations of women in early Islamic history; constructions of femininity and...

Sadia Saeed is a historical sociologist with substantive interests in religion and politics, international human rights, and global inequalities. Her first book Politics of Desecularization: Law and the Minority Question in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2017) examines the contentious relationship between Islam, nationalism, and rights of religious minorities in colonial India and Pakistan. It received the 2016-2017 Book Prize from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS). Her...

Stephen Zunes has been at USF since 1995, teaching courses on the politics of the Middle East and other regions, nonviolence, conflict resolution, U.S. foreign policy, and globalization. He served as the founder and first director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. A prominent specialist on U.S. Middle East policy, Professor Zunes has presented hundreds of public lectures and conference papers in both the United States and over a dozen foreign countries. He has traveled frequently to the...