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Amazigh Voice found Dr. Jean Ait Belkhir in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he is presently a professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences at Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) and at the University of New Orleans. In the United States, he is the founder of the Race, Gender, and Class (RGC) Association, and the co-director of the Race, Gender & Class Project at Southern University at New Orleans. In New Orleans, Louisiana, in October of 1999, 2000 and 2001, he co-organized the First, Second, and Third Annual RGC Conference. In addition to being the founding editor of the RGC journal, which debuted in 1993, and the founder chair (1994-1998) of the American Sociological Association Race, Gender and Class section, Dr Ait-Belkhir has published numerous books and articles. His e-mail is <[email protected]>
The SUNO RGC Project's website is: www.suno.edu/sunorgc/
Amazigh Voice (AV): Prof. Ait-Belkhir, could you tell us about your career and how you came to this country?
Dr. Jean Ait-Belkhir (J.A.): After getting my doctorate in Sociology in 1980, (I just want to remind the reader that I left school only with the "french certificate" [le certificat d'étude primaire] at 14 years old) having completed research on the French Democracy, I left France in 1987 and came to the US to conduct research on behavior and genetics. I spent 2 ½ years at the Department of Psychology, University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I then moved to the University of Wisconsin at Superior, where I taught sociology for two years. After that, I moved to Towson in Maryland as Scholar of the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women ( ITROW) and Associate of the Office of Multicultural Studies, Towson State University. I then went to New York where I did research on social injustice at the Michael Harrington Center at Queens College. In September 1997-98, I joined the University of New Orleans (UNO) and SUNO (Southern University at New Orleans).
AV: What interesting experiences have you had in the different countries where you worked?
J.A.: I went to Madagascar as a French army paratrooper, from which I deserted (and was jailed for several months for desertion in a french military prison). I decided to enroll in the French Army, after being arrested...