Saadia Toor

Saadia Toor is an Associate Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Staten Island. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University and has been a faculty member since 2004, achieving tenure in 2010. Her academic leadership includes roles on boards of Graduate Center institutions such as CLAGS (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies), the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and the Committee for Globalization and Social Change. She contributed to the Chancellor’s Commission for the Mellon-funded Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) at CUNY.

Toor’s research critically examines intersections of culture, politics, and power, with a focus on imperialism, gender, race, and postcolonial contexts. Her work addresses topics ranging from Pakistan’s Cold War-era cultural politics to the racialized and gendered dimensions of the U.S. student debt crisis. She has authored State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan (2011) and co-edited Special Issue on Solidarity in Women’s Studies Quarterly (2014).

Her recent scholarship reveals a thematic shift toward analyzing systemic inequities in education and labor markets, particularly how race and gender shape access to resources in neoliberal contexts. Earlier works explored moral regulation in Pakistan through lenses of religion and class, as well as cultural consumption patterns in post-liberalization India. Her writings critique imperialist feminist discourses and examine anti-Muslim prejudices in the U.S. post-9/11 era.

Toor’s publications span over two decades, reflecting interdisciplinary engagement with topics like national identity formation, language politics in Pakistan, and structural causes of food insecurity. She maintains active participation in academic governance and socially engaged scholarship, advocating for equity in higher education and marginalized communities.