Excerpt:
This past week, University of Michigan students watched American Sniper after the university first cancelled the film's showing amid protests from an Arab-American Muslim student that the film offended her. The episode at Michigan was like my own painful experience at Duke University after a Muslim student group recently blackballed me.
Tuesday night, while Islamic State fighters gained new ground in Syria, I walked onto a stage at Duke University to argue for a progressive, feminist interpretation of Islam in the world. Staring into stage lights, I counted the number of people looking back at me: nine, not including my parents and son.
"I would have come here to speak to just one person. To me, it is simply a victory to stand before you," I said.