In this episode of AUHSD Future Talks, Superintendent Matsuda interviews Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, associate professor of practice at Teachers College, Columbia University. During their talk, Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess discusses her story, storytelling, radicalization, the importance of student and teacher relationships, identity, and her message to students.
Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess has taught, researched, and published on a range of issues in education, including mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, teaching quality, development, inclusion, radicalization, othering, educational displacement, storytelling, marginalization, social transformation, social disintegration, social norm formation, social mobility, higher education policy, transitional justice, Islam, financial inclusion of women, and corruption. Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess’ most recent work on radicalization and building resilience to hate, othering, and exclusion has sparked significant international interest and Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess has delivered 50+ invited lectures in the U.S., South Korea, China, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Austria, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, the United Kingdom, Qatar, and India.
More than twenty-five years ago, Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess first became a teacher as a young teen during the Bosnian Genocide. Her lived experience of being an object of hate and ethnic persecution has informed her scholarship on building resilience to othering and extremism via education. She was awarded a 2021 Finalist Medal for Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction by the American Library Association and Best Book recognition by School Library Journal, Malala Fund, Capitol Choices, and Children’s Center for Literature for her nonfiction work exploring resilience to exclusion, othering, and hate. Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess obtained her PhD (2012) in Comparative and International Education with a specialization in Economics at Columbia University. Her doctoral research employed mixed methods to examine the intricacies of favor reciprocation and corruption in education, providing empirical evidence on how such phenomena usurped merited social mobility in education and triggered displacement. Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess holds a Master of Philosophy (2010) from Columbia University’s Teachers College and Masters in Economic and Political Development with a specialization in the Persian Gulf from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (2004), as well as a B.A. in Economics from Brown University (2000). She is a recipient of multiple awards, including grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation; the U.S. State Department; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Kennan Institute; International Research and Exchange Board; Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies; and others.
