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...

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...

Oren Kroll-Zeldin holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and Social Change from the California Institute of Integral Studies where he also received an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation. He is the Assistant Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice where he teaches courses on Jewish culture, identity and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also serves as the associate director of Hebrew San Francisco: Ulpan, a three-week intensive Hebrew language...

Before joining the Department of Sociology at the University of San Francisco, Sadia Saeed held postdoctoral fellowships at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the Department of Sociology at Yale University. She teaches courses on sociological theory, sociology of Islam, and global sociology. Saeed is a historical sociologist with substantive interests in sociology of religion, political sociology, human rights, and international law. Her first project focused on...

Taymiya R. Zaman received her BA, Philosophy, Smith College and her PhD in History (2007) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She joined the University of San Francisco in 2007. Her area of research expertise is Mughal India and her current research interests include historical memory in South Asia, the interconnectedness of life writing and history, and the transition from subjects to citizens in the Islamicate world. She has designed the History Department's "Islamic World" emphasis...

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...