Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess grew up in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After surviving genocide and 1,150 days under the Serbian military siege, she emigrated to the United States in 1996. She then earned a BA in Economics from Brown University and two Masters degrees and a PhD from Columbia University. Currently, she is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education, Health, and Psychology, where she works on understanding how and why societies fall apart and what role education plays in countering radicalization and rebuilding decimated countries. She has published on education-related issues and has lectured around the world to adult and adolescent audiences. In her students’ feedback, Sabic-El-Rayess is consistently praised as one of the most inspiring professors they have encountered.

Sabic-El-Rayess’s award-winning memoir, The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival, is told from her perspective as a young Muslim woman growing up during the Bosnian War. I was honored to talk with Sabic-El-Rayess recently over Zoom about what being an author means to her, how her memoir represents both individual and universal experiences of the genocide, and why she believes the term “objectivity” can shield discriminatory bias. (more…)

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