Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute and the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights. She is currently a 2024 Carnegie Fellow and a Global Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (2023-2025). Hajar researches the politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. In addition to award-winning articles, she is author of the book, The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Princeton University Press. She is also a public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in outlets including The LA Times, Time Magazine, BBC News, The Hill, and The Grio.