Biography
Walid A. Saleh is Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He is also a former Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies. His research focuses on Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), Islamic intellectual history, and the reception of the Bible in Islam. He has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Konrad Adenauer Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation and the New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation. His publications include The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (Brill, 2004), and In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʾī’s Bible Treatise (Brill, 2008). He has published over 50 articles on topics related to Qur’anic interpretation, the gloss tradition, and Islamic apocalypticism. He is the editor of the Routledge Qur’an Series and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and the Journal of Qur’anic Studies. He is completing a monograph on the history of Qur’anic interpretation and Islam.
Candidate Statement
AAR was the place I was interviewed for my first job back in 1998. It was in Disney World in Orlando. I was still a graduate student and that was also my first AAR that I had ever attended. It was a transformative experience, and the beginning of my academic career. Zoom has made those initial interviews redundant; books online have made the book exhibition also less necessary, and one can argue that gatherings like the AAR are a thing of the past. However, recent events in the world have made it clear that academic professional organizations like the AAR are needed now, more than ever. It is as though we are back to the beginnings in arguing for the basics: freedom of speech, the right to dissent, and the necessity of critical thinking. But more importantly we need to make a welcoming space for our graduate students and young colleagues as they embark on their academic and professional career.
A large organization like the AAR can seem unwieldy and opaque. If I am given the honor to be part of the leadership of the AAR, I will concentrate on two areas: graduate students and their role in our organization and new starting scholars and their needs. I do not claim to know in detail how, but my aim is to make the AAR more welcoming, more inclusive of graduate students, and more central to their journey. As cuts to new teaching positions accelerate, we need to ensure that there are organizational supports for our graduate students, and a nourishing space for new professors and a respectable academic body that continues to make the case for the centrality of the study of religion in the academy.
The cost of participating in the conference will soon become prohibitively expensive to many of our graduate students, let alone to our international guests. Revisiting our funding models might help us think creatively of how we can make the participation of our graduate students less burdensome. It is the small steps that I promise to look at. At the same time, the larger picture will remain central: The AAR stands among the most esteemed academic institutions, and I am committed to amplifying its voice within and beyond the scholarly community. The outreach of our organization might also benefit from a revision. Finally, as a Canadian citizen, I believe that I bring a perspective that is conducive to the well-being of the AAR. One thing I promise my Canadian colleagues is that I will ask the question: Will the AAR convene in Canada again?