When Khaled A. Beydoun entered law school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) back in 2001, two things led him to pursue a legal academic career — the chance to study under prominent critical race theorists and what he saw as the dearth of scholarship on racial Muslim identities in the aftermath of 9/11.
“It was transformative for me to see brilliant scholars of color talking about the law in ways that I had never heard before,” Beydoun recalls, referring to leading critical race theorists such as Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Devon Carbado and Cheryl Harris, all professors of law at UCLA. “That really left an impression on me,” Beydoun says.
Beydoun’s law school entry also coincided with the heightened scrutiny that law enforcement directed toward Muslim Americans — or those perceived to be Muslims — in the wake of 9/11.
“I began to see a lot of gaps and opportunities in the legal scholarship,” Beydoun says. “A lot of the legal scholarship didn’t focus on the racial construction of Arab and Muslim Americans and the special legal crises faced by them after 9/11 but also before 9/11.
That’s when I realized, "Hey, someone’s gotta write about this stuff . Maybe I should be the one."
Fourteen years later, Beydoun has established himself as a “vocal and visible” commentator on pressing legal issues that involve race and civil liberties, according to Leticia M. Diaz, dean at the Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law at Barry University, where Beydoun was named “Professor of the Year” for the 2014-15 academic year — his inaugural year at the school.
“His student evaluations earned near perfect scores, evidencing that his passion for scholarship is matched by his love for teaching,” Diaz says.
