About me
Zara
I am a professor in the Bilingual Education and TESOL Programs at The City College of New York, and the Linguistics program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. I have been fortunate to integrate scholarship, teaching, service, and activism in the areas of linguistics, education, multilingualism, immigration, and Palestinian justice.
In my research in theoretical linguistics, I want to understand how language is used by individuals and groups for expressive purposes. Most of this work, in which I explore the ways in which language is used to communicate subtle message differences and to express social connections, is based on the Columbia School framework. As a teacher educator, I aim to support pre-service and in-service teachers to observe language practices and diversity with joy and wonder, and to gain new appreciation for languages and communities.
Formerly both a department chair and director of the Programs in Bilingual Education & TESOL, I am currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of B-SEAL (Building Secondary Educator and Leadership) for Multilingual Learners. This US Department of Education-funded project works with secondary teachers and school leaders to support the academic and language development of multilingual learners. I’m a Co-PI of the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE), a project that develops multimodal and multilingual resources that center the strengths of mixed-status immigrant communities that include undocumented, refugee, and asylum-seeking members.
I serve as the president of the Columbia School Linguistic Society, and on the academic advisory committee for American Friends of Combatants for Peace. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I honor my family’s memory through work for Palestinian justice.