Scoot Over

What happens when women are excluded, silenced and marginalized within religious communities? In the inaugural episode of Scoot Over, Slate journalist Aymann Ismail explores the trouble with rooting out gender exclusion in a group that faces existential threats from outsiders, and what inclusivity in religious institutions and communities looks like.Melissa Weisz is an actor, producer, writer and consultant with a focus of giving underrepresented individuals and communities a voice. Melissa grew up in the Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, and through her work, aims to “normalize” other-ness so we can all honor and respect those who do not look like us, love like us, or pray like us. She was featured in Vogue’s “American women in transformation", was cast on Netflix’s Unorthodox, and is the co-founder, producer and host of "the forbidden apple podcast" which explores the complex relationship between queer people and religion/faith. www.melissaweisz.com Follow @melissaweisz on instagram. Follow @theforbiddenapplepodcast on instagram. Nurjahan Khatun is the founder of a social enterprise which dares women to do what they have been afraid of doing for lack of confidence, inspiration, resources or a combination of these limiting factors. She grew up in a conservative Muslim community in East London, was the first in her family to graduate university, and is now a TEDx speaker, winner of the Mike Nichols Award for ‘Inspiration’ at the prestigious Association for Project Management Awards, and has been a public and motivational speaker for over a decade. Her first book, Hook of Hope, is due to be published in 2021.

Aymann is joined by two Jewish scholars to discuss how memory - a personal version of history passed down from generation to generation - shapes identity. Emmanuel Kattan is Director of the Alliance Program, a partnership between Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Ecole Polytechnique. A native of Montreal, Emmanuel studied politics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and earned a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He currently teaches a class on the Politics of Memory at Columbia University. He is the author of five books: an essay on ethics and memory and four novels. wwww.twitter.com/emmanuelkattanRabbi Alexander Goldbergis the Dean of Religious Life and Belief at the University of Surrey. He’s a barrister, chaplain, human rights activist and broadcaster, with a regular slot on the BBC’s most listened to UK radio station. Alex has an interest in sport and chairs the England Football Association’s Faith and Football Group and previously advised the organisers of the London Olympics on faith issues. is a barrister, chaplain, and human rights activist. He is currently the Dean of the College of Chaplains and Coordinating Chaplain at the University of Surrey. He continues to be Chief Executive of the Carob Tree Project, working on a number of international and UK-based community relations and community development projects and is a contributor to BBC Radio 2's Pause For Thought. He has been a led a delegation to the UN Human Rights Council for over a decade where he successfully changed international law in relation to group access to justice. In 2012, he was an Olympic and Paralympic Chaplain.

History is written by the victors is a famous phrase, but rarely do we dig into what it actually means and its consequences for how we understand who we are. Aymann speaks with two academics who are teaching the rest of us to resist the neat and convenient historical narratives we learned in school .Hussein Rashid, PhD, is a freelance academic based in New York City, on the land of the Lenape people. His work focuses on religion in US popular culture, and Shi’i theologies of justice. He was the lead content consultant for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s exhibitAmerica to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far, an executive producer on the New York Times op-docSecret History of Muslims in the US, and is an executive producer on the documentary projectAmerican Muslims: A History Revealed.Nikki Sanchez is a Pipil and Irish/Scottish academic, Indigenous media maker, and environmental educator.  Her TEDx presentation is entitled “Decolonization is for Everyone”, and she is the creator and director of "Decolonize Together", a collective of Indigenous and Black women who offer decolonial and inclusivity workshops and curriculum creation. In May of 2020, Nikki's first book, an anthology of the Salish Sea Resident Orca whales was released by the Royal BC Museum publisher, it has remained on the BC bestsellers list ever since.

A plus-sized hijabi model and a media professor join Aymann to explore the nuance of the mediated world of body positivity and confidence culture.Leah Vernon is an international Hijabi social media influencer, award-winning author, motivational speaker, educator, and content creator. Her book, UNASHAMED: musings of a Fat, Black Muslim is out now. https://www.instagram.com/lvernon2000/Professor Shani Orgad is based in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include gender, feminism and the media. Her recent books are Confidence Culture (with Rosalind Gill, 2022) and Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality (2019).

Aymann welcomes two incredibly talented and determined female artists to discuss the struggle to be seen, heard, and accepted as outsiders in their respective spaces.  Claudia Gold, who for years was known to us as simply CLAW MONEY, is a pioneering graffiti writer, artist, curator, brand director, stylist, costume designer, fashion editor, historian, marketing and branding expert, author, agitator, mentor, and gatekeeper/arbiter of downtown NYC culture. She lives and works in NYC... Still! Find out more at www.clawandco.com Rajae El Mouhandiz is a singer, composer, short film maker and (music) theater maker. She produces Maghreb pop, soul and jazz and has released the albums Incarnation, Hand of Fatima, the EP Watani and the single Gracefully. Her short docu-film HOPE! was nominated for the NFF prize. She is one of the 60 female curators of the international MUSLIMA exhibition and she gave a TEDx talk about the power of identity and music. https://linktr.ee/rajae

Aymann is joined by two leaders in the Diversity Equity & Inclusion space in tech who know firsthand what it takes for corporate America to truly be inclusive, and why it’s worth it for both the employees and the bottom line.  Lesley Slaton Brown is the Chief Diversity Officer of HP Inc. She served as the Principal Investigator for the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) Computing Project and is the Co-founder of Curated Pathways to Innovation (CPI), a collective impact model focused on broadening participation and access for minorities and women in STEM education and careers. Lesley was named one of the Most Powerful Women in Corporate Diversity by Black Enterprise, a Woman of the Year in Technology by Silicon Valley’s Chapter of National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. and a Top Influential Woman in Corporate America by Savoy Magazine. https://twitter.com/dailyslate. TeLisa Daughtry is an award-winning serial social entrepreneur, technology & STEM,  DE&I advocate, and author. She is the Founder & Chief Technology Officer of FlyTechnista, mobile app; Founder of DEI Dojo; and Impact Investor at FemX Ventures. As an entrepreneur, mentor, and advocate; she is passionate about creating solutions to empower women, youth, and underrepresented groups to participate in technology and entrepreneurship; and has built several technology solutions and developed initiatives in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals which have engaged thousands of women and girls globally. Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram: @telisad @flytechnista

A recent AARP study stated that ageism could cost the US economy up to 4 trillion dollars by 2050, yet ageism is too often left out of the DE&I conversation.Ashton Applewhite is an internationally recognized expert on ageism and the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. She speaks widely at venues that have included the TED mainstage and the United Nations, and is a leading spokesperson for a movement to make age discrimination as unacceptable as any other prejudice. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @thischairrocks and on her websites thischairrocks.com and yoisthisageist.com. Norma Raynes is social entrepreneur and Director of a charity called From Generation to Generation. It creates innovative solutions for young and old people bringing them together to support and inspire each other. Norma was Professor of Social Care University of Salford, Chairman Trafford South Primary Care Trust, a schoolteacher and governor, and an actor with the Quarantine Theatre Company. She worked in the USA at Harvard and MIT and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Centre for people with learning difficulties. www.caldecottfestival.org.uk

In an era where Western societies are on increasingly shaky ground with diverse groups of minorities calling for inclusion, France's definition, and enforcement, of secularism as a solution has drawn international attention.Patrice Brodeur is a Professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at the University of Montreal. His work investigates the dynamics of power and multiple identities within intercultural, interreligious, intercivilizational, and interworldview dialogues. He recently founded a social entrepreneurship NGO called InterWorldView to improve the transformative capacities of peace builders worldwide. Brodeur’s most recent book, co-authored with Dr. Ina Merdjanova, is Religion as a Conversation Starter: Interreligious Dialogue for Peacebuilding in the Balkans, 1990-2008 (Continuum Press, 2009; paperback 2011).Mame-Fatou Niangis an associate professor of French at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, author of Identités Françaises: Banlieues, féminités et universalisme (2019) and co-director, with Kaytie Nielsen, of the film Mariannes Noires: Une Mosaïques Afropéenne, a plural portrait of seven Black French women. Karim Mahmoud-Vintam is the founder and CEO of Cités d'Or, an organization and civic movement whose mission is to educate at-risk young adults in citizenship, envisioned and practiced as a secular spirituality. His most recent book is France is dead, long live France: For a second French revolution (Editions Marie B., 2017).