March 17, 2026
Jamie Mayerfeld, Chair Department of Law, Societies, and Justice
Peer Teaching Evaluation of Professor Rawan Arar
Dear Jamie,
I had the honor of visiting Rawan Arar's class on December 3, 2025 to observe her teaching. My assessment is that Professor Arar is an outstanding and accomplished teacher with an admirably empathic approach to teaching undergraduate students.
The class I reviewed is LSJ 329, Citizenship, Migration, and Rights. The class is important in the LSJ curriculum. it covers a topical area (migration) that is essential for understanding justice and law in the world today. The topic of migration and immigration has been of enduring interest to LSJ students and many other UW undergraduates.
The syllabus for the course is well organized and presented. It includes an informative course overview and a helpful list of goals for the quarter, divided into learning objectives and skills objectives. Readings and assignments are outlined clearly, with some pictures as illustrations of key readings.
The course has a variety of graded assignments that together assure careful attention to reading materials, critical engagement with course materials, and attention to the insights of fellow students. The assignments also offer opportunity to reflect creatively on the contentious and potentially upsetting topics covered in the class. One of the more interesting assignments is the midterm "Illustration and Essay" that asks the students to create their own original artwork related to topics in the class, along with an essay explaining the illustration. The syllabus includes some examples of past student projects that together show how students can bring a range of artistic skills and styles to the assignment. The final project for the class also taps into student creativity, asking the students to provide a filmed presentation of an immigration related issue. For that assignment, students also need to watch and comment on the assignments shared by other students.
I visited the first two hours of Professor Arar's class on the final weekly class meeting of the quarter. I recently reviewed a portfolio of teaching materials related to Professor Arar's promotion case that attested to her outstanding strengths as a classroom instructor. I was not disappointed. Arar was masterful in the class. In a large lecture hall with high attendance, Professor Arar managed to maintain a conversational tone throughout, using her voice very effectively to talk with the students rather than talk at them. She began by giving a clear overview of the class time for the day. She also spent time at the begi9nning of class going over expectations for the final class assignment, with reminders about the learning goals of the assignment. Rawan replied with clarity and empathy to student questions. I was impressed when she responded to a student's question about the expected length of a written assignment by asking, "Do you want a word count? Would that make you feel more comfortable?" That signaled genuine interest in positioning students to do well on the assignment.
The class then turned to a discussion of the assigned reading for the day. Professor Arar did an excellent job introducing a reading on Astro Bioethics and Indigenous Thought, which seemed an excellent choice for closing out a course that covered hard topics. Arar framed her discussion by saying things like "Let me explain the stakes..." and "Here is something really cool..." Comments like those helped to set up the broader class discussion that followed. Student participation in the discussion was quite broad for such a large class, with a large number of students offering comments as Professor Arar moved about the classroom to offer students her microphone. A key reason the discussion was effective was that Arar's framing questions were broad enough to make students comfortable replying, but also able to set up a discussion that would cover quite a few important substantive and conceptual points. A good example of this was framing the discussion of the Wilkerson book by asking why the author had framed a hefty and broad ranging volume around the stories of just three individuals. I was also impressed that Professor Arar could call on all the students by name in class with 118 students!
The class moved on to a discussion with a visitor, Professor Matthew Randolph from American Ethnic Studies. Professor Arar engaged Randolph in an illuminating discussion of his work and was very effective tying his study of an earlier time period to topics covered in the class.
It is traditional to include a list of suggestions at the end of one of these reports, if only to give more credibility to a very positive review. However, I don't have any major suggestions, other than to say, "Keep doing what you are doing". The students are quite obviously well served by the thought and genuine care that Professor Arar puts into teaching. My only small suggestions are: 1) Arar might try using the handheld microphone to pass to students rather than sharing her lapel mic, and 2) Arar could reduce the amount of text on a few of the Power Point slides that were hard to read while they were up.
I have often thought that the real value of the Peer Teaching Review comes from what the observing faculty member learns from the experience. That is the case with this review. I feel inspired to work harder on my own teaching. I also gained some valuable ideas about ways I can change some assignments and be more inclusive in teaching.
Sincerely,
George I. Lovell
Professor of Political Science