The Growing Challenges of Hate: Asian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives

The Growing Challenges of Hate: Asian, Muslim and Jewish perspectives – with Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou , Daniel Hummel & Deborah Lauter

SYNOPSIS: With hate crimes increasing recently in New York and in wider America we will explore the issues and challenges of racism faced by different minority communities – Asians, Muslims and Jews. What are the challenges faced by these communities? How are these communities reacting to the current spike in racism, hate speech and hate crimes and how can government, non profits, media, and others in the community contribute to solving these growing social problems?

SPEAKERS:

Yuh-Line Niou has spent her career working on legislative and advocacy campaigns. In 2016, Yuh-Line was elected to serve the 65th Assembly District, representing the following lower Manhattan neighborhoods: the Lower East Side, Chinatown, South Street Seaport area, Financial District and Battery Park City. She began working on state policy issues while in college, eventually accepting a position with the Washington State House Health Committee Chair. While there, she helped develop policies to expand senior access to prescription medication, improve women’s health care, and expand health coverage for low-income families. Yuh-Line then went on to work as an advocate and organizer on anti-poverty issues.

In the Assembly, Yuh-Line has continued her advocacy work around financial empowerment. She has pushed to improve financial protections for consumers, particularly for unbanked communities. . Along with her colleagues, Yuh-Line helped form New York State’s first ever Asian Pacific American Legislative Task Force, which will focus on advancing issues impacting New York’s Asian American community.

Dr. Daniel Hummel is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana Monroe, where he teaches public budgeting and finance, state and local government, American urban politics and intergovernmental relations.

He completed his Ph.D. in Public Administration at Florida Atlantic University in 2013. His research is focused on local government and nonprofit budgeting and finance with a specific interest in legacy cities. In addition, Dr. Hummel also is interested in the overlap of public service values and ethics with religious motivations. His most recent publication is a book with Rowman & Littlefield on the policy diffusion of anti-Sharia laws in the United States (2021). He regularly presents at the Western Social Science Association and Midwest Political Science Association conferences. Dr. Hummel is also actively involved with the interfaith community and regularly serves on panels and with initiatives that strive for peace, tolerance, understanding and respect between communities. He published his book Jesus and Muhammad: Commonalities of Two Great Religions as a culmination of more than 5 years of interfaith scholarship.

Deborah Lauter was appointed as the first Executive Director of the NYC Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC) in August, 2019. Under her leadership, OPHC’s diverse staff of six coordinates city agencies on hate crime prevention and response, and works with the communities that are the most vulnerable to hate violence to provide education, resources and support. Deborah brings three decades of experience in the fight against hate acts and bigotry. Formerly a Senior Vice-President and National Civil Rights Director for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), she helped build training and education programs to provide schools, law enforcement officials, and communities with resources to target the roots of hatred.

A native Californian who also lived in Atlanta for a number of years, Deborah is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and received her J.D. from Cardozo School of Law.

Moderator
Emre Celik is the Executive Director at Peace Islands New York. He has held positions in numerous non-profits in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Washington DC and New York working on educational and interfaith projects. He is currently completing his PhD in Islamic Studies examining civil Islam in the United States and regularly speaks on civil Islam, sufism, Muslim diaspora communities and human rights issues and has spoken at Harvard, Georgetown, American, George Washington and various other universities and institutions in the United States. His op-eds, interviews and social media are available here :