Connections Episode 13

Asylum in the USA

Mouin Rabbani Interviews Basileus Zeno

On Monday, 23 August Jadaliyya co-editor Mouin Rabbani speaks with Syrian scholar, political refugee, and Jadaliyya Syria Page co-editor Basileus Zeno about the US asylum system. This episode of Connections examines how this system operates and the extent to which it remains unchanged since the departure of the Trump administration.

Connections offers timely and informative interviews on current events and broader policy questions, as well as themes relevant to knowledge production. It combines journalism, analysis, and scholarship.

Guest

Basileus Zeno is Karl Loewenstein Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in Political Science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. His areas of specialization are comparative politics and contemporary political theory with a regional focus on the Middle East. An archaeologist by training, he left Syria in 2012 and that same year applied for political asylum in the United States. Zeno recently recounted his experience with the US asylum system in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

Host

Mouin Rabbani has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He was previously Senior Analyst Middle East and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and head of political affairs with the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. He is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.