Getting With the Program

Growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, Tahany Alsabahi thought the city was majority Arab American, “because that’s what I saw,” she says. “It wasn’t until college that I met white people from Dearborn, and I was like, ‘What do you mean?’”

Her interest in learning about race was further fueled by a class at the University of Michigan offered via the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR), a social justice education program. Alsabahi enjoyed it so much she began working for IGR, facilitating and designing programs and workshops addressing intergroup conflict. 

“The workshops would focus on social identities, like race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. I would sit down with members of whatever community I was working with and figure out what their needs were, and what issues they’d need addressed,” Alsabahi says. “Sometimes the community in question was a student organization looking for support in addressing a problematic incident; other times it was professors seeking preventative training.”

After graduation, Alsabahi continued with IGR for two years before attending law school at the University of Southern California. She still uses the skills she used at IGR as a commercial litigator at Holland & Knight in Chicago.

“My experience at IGR taught me to not freeze when something unexpected is said or learned. Everyone coming into a dialogue was bringing so much with them that I, as a facilitator, didn’t know,” she says. “It’s the same with clients: There are times where the client and I are looking at the same contract or same set of facts, and my understanding is completely different from theirs. IGR has allowed me to better anticipate those differences and understandings—and not be intimidated by it, or have it derail progress.”