Louise Cainkar

Louise Cainkar "is a sociologist and senior research fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute. She is completing a study of the impact of the September 11th attacks on the Arab/Muslim community in metropolitan Chicago, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation. She is also a recipient of the Carnegie Corporation Scholar Award, with which she is studying the Islamization of the Arab Community in Metropolitan Chicago. Her work in this area also examines Islamic revival among second-generation Arab immigrants and the relative importance of local, transnational, and global factors. Dr. Cainkar presented her research on this topic at the Institute for Diplomacy in Amman, Jordan in the Fall of 2004. She is a consulting scholar on the Carnegie Corporation-funded, Social Science Research Council project “Reframing the Challenge of Migration and Security” for which she completed an empirically-based study entitled “US Muslim Leaders and Activists Evaluate Post 9/11 Domestic Security Policies.”

"Professor Cainkar has been actively engaged in dialogue with scholars of Muslims in Europe, including meeting at Stanford University to discuss French and US Approaches to Understanding Islam, a meeting of Danish scholars at the Danish National Institute of Social Research, and a forthcoming meeting sponsored by Italian Social Science Research Council to discuss Islam in five European countries. In the public sector, she recently completed a study of the capacity of American Islamic institutions to provide services to low-income Muslims for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and is conducting a collaborative study with the Arab American Action Network of barriers and resources affecting domestic violence intervention in Arab/Muslim families. Professor Cainkar has published more than thirty articles or chapters on Arabs and Muslims in the US and is regarded as a national expert on immigrant Muslim communities, Arab immigrants, and Arab Americans. Her forthcoming book on the Arab/Muslim experience in the US after September 11th is tentatively titled Homeland Insecurity. She has also worked as a grant maker to immigrant community organizations, taught in UIC's Sociology Department, and conducted research on migration within the Middle East. Her most recent publication is: “The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims and Arabs in the United States,” in John Tirman, ed., The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After September 11th (New York; The New Press). 2004."


 * Editorial Committee, Middle East Research and Information Project

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