Assistant Professor of American Politics & Public Policy · Michigan State University
Nura Sediqe
I'm a political scientist studying who moves politics forward in a diverse democracy — and how.
Forthcoming Book
Forthcoming · University of Chicago Press
Beliefs that Bind
Political Mobilization and Collective Communal Responsibility for Muslims in the United States
Beliefs that Bind offers a timely and critical examination of American Muslims’ political behavior and argues that the extent to which they feel a sense of responsibility toward Muslim communities explains their likelihood to mobilize. Drawing on a series of originally collected surveys of American Muslims from 2019-2024 and nearly ten years of qualitative in-depth interviews from 2015-2025, this book offers audiences important insight into one specific dynamic that captures the pulse of costly political behavior for American Muslims: connection and duty to the global Muslim community, the ummah.
About the book →
As Seen In
- PBS NewsHour
- NPR
- CNN
- BBC
- Al Jazeera
- Time
- The Washington Post
About
I am a political scientist who studies a deceptively simple question: Who moves politics forward in a diverse democracy, and how?
My work focuses on communities whose political lives are often misunderstood—including Muslims, immigrants, Black Americans, and women of color. I study how people respond to discrimination, build solidarity, and turn a sense of shared responsibility into political action.
In my forthcoming book, Beliefs that Bind, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, I introduce the concept of ummah consciousness: a belief that Muslims are bound by a shared moral responsibility to care for, respond to, and act on behalf of fellow Muslims, particularly when members of the community face hardship, discrimination, or injustice.
I am an Assistant Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at Michigan State University. I earned my Ph.D. in political science from Duke University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, and received my Master in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. Before entering academia, I served as Research Director at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I also work with community organizations on political participation, belonging, food justice, and immigrant and refugee communities.
My analysis and insights have appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, CNN, the BBC, among others. Across my research, writing, and media work, my goal is the same: to make rigorous scholarship useful and to bring overlooked communities from the margins of political conversation to the center.
Research Areas
- American political behavior
- Race, ethnicity and politics
- Race and religion
- American Muslim politics
- Discrimination and identity
- Cross-racial solidarity
- Political participation
- Public policy
- Arab American voters
- Collective action