Why I was scared to attend the AAR Conference this year | Bulletin for the Study of Religion.
Like many scholars of religion, I normally make my plans to attend the annual national meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). This year, I decided I would not attend. Some of my friends and colleagues thought it was perhaps because I was an adjunct, and had no funding to attend the most important professional conference of our discipline. This concern is real for so many of our members, but was not my issue this year. Instead, it was that we were hosting the meeting in an open carry state, and one that allowed students to carry their weapons into classrooms. As a person of color and as a Muslim, the location of the meeting in San Antonio did not seem prudent.