Interview with Mayanthi Fernando, Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz

Student Project Manager Ella Layton ’26 interviews Mayanthi Fernando, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In the conversation, Fernando discusses where laïcité or secularism in France draws the line on public displays of religion differently than in the United States. The wearing of veils by Muslim women in France is such a national controversy because it disrupts the French republic’s ideal that religion should not interfere with so-called public order. The marginalization, culturally and federally, these women experience is aggravated by the long ideological tradition of racialization of Islam and North Africans. This interview concludes with Professor Fernando stating that change must happen at a local level, centering difficult dialogue and uncomfortable conversations to move towards a religiously diverse French republic. Read more