Luma Simms

Fellow

Luma Simms is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mrs. Simms is writer and thinker on American culture, religion, politics, political theology, immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Her primary focus has been the critique of modern America through an immigrant lens.

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Luma Simms is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mrs. Simms is writer and thinker on American culture, religion, politics, political theology, immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Her primary focus has been the critique of modern America through an immigrant lens.

Mrs. Simms’s essays, articles, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications including National Affairs, First Things, Providence Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, Law and Liberty, the Institute for Family Studies, and others. She has presented on family and migration at the Harvard Ash Center, spoken on the transmission of antisemitism in immigrant communities, and been interviewed by the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the complicated journey of becoming an American. She has also been interviewed on Arabic television and American and Canadian radio on topics such as religious freedom in the Middle East, life under the Taliban, Congress and DACA, immigration and the Middle East, divorce, parenting, and elder care in Eastern cultures.

Before joining EPPC, Mrs. Simms was an Associate Fellow at The Philos Project where her research and writing focused on a Christian presence in the Middle East, antisemitism, and immigrant life and thought.

Some of Mrs. Simms’s notable essays include Re-Americanizing America Part I and Part II at Providence Magazine, Democracy Without Religion is Dead Part I and Part II at Public Discourse, Identity and Assimilation at National Affairs; Immigration and the Desire for Rootedness at Public Discourse; and Thinking Is Self-Emptying at The Point magazine.

Her background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She studied law at Chapman University School of Law before leaving to become an at-home mom. Mrs. Simms was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and immigrated to America at the age of nine; her parents and ancestors are from Mosul, and she speaks Arabic with a Moslawi dialect.

 

Follow her on X at @lumasimmsEPPC

Find her work since 2018 on the scholar page below

Find her full portfolio at www.lumasimms.com

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The naturalization oath should be our North Star

Luma Simms

When taking the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance, immigrants make a solemn vow to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign…

Articles

Washington Examiner / August 3, 2026

The New York Times has a Nicholas Kristof problem

Luma Simms

The Committee to Protect Journalists recently voted not to exclude from its list of journalists those who are either in…

Articles

Washington Examiner / July 8, 2026

The Moment I, an Arab, Became American

Luma Simms

riving north on the 101 freeway on a foggy December day in 1981, we exit to fill the car with…

Articles

Providence Magazine / July 3, 2026

Public Christianity & Pluralism in America at 250

Luma Simms

Public Christianity means working to rebuild and renew public mores founded on a Christian philosophy of societal order and cohesion….

Articles

Providence Magazine / June 26, 2026

Pope Leo’s Missed Opportunity in Magnifica Humanitas

Luma Simms

If Catholic social thought (CST) is to be an instrument of evangelization, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of…

Articles

Providence / May 29, 2026

Re-Americanizing America: The American Heritage with Subcultures

Luma Simms

Part II of a Two-Part Essay Abraham Lincoln understood the covenantal nature of America, which he called “the electric cord.”…

Articles

Providence Magazine / May 20, 2026

Re-Americanizing America: The Bond of Creed and Covenant

Luma Simms

Part I of a Two-Part Essay Before the “polarization” and the “fractured republic” reality made it impossible to ignore our…

Articles

Providence Magazine / May 20, 2026

Human Dignity Does Not Mandate Unlimited Immigration

Luma Simms

I converted to Catholicism after years of misgivings over what I perceived as its readiness to excuse all manner of…

Articles

 

Why I Am Not Ashamed to Support War with Iran

Luma Simms

My family arrived in America from Iraq in December of 1978. Less than a year later, on November 4, 1979…

Articles

Providence Magazine / April 30, 2026

I’m a Middle Eastern Immigrant – Zohran Mamdani Is Dangerous

Luma Simms

Since taking office earlier this year, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made good on his dangerous campaign promises…

Articles

AMAC / April 27, 2026

The Real Target In This Vatican Drama Isn’t Rome. It’s American Voters.

Luma Simms

This has the fingerprints of the DNC and NGO operatives all over it.

Articles

The Daily Wire / April 14, 2026

Bread Grows in Winter offers bracing vision of faith, Christ-centered triumph

Luma Simms

A review of the first English translation of a powerful 1970 book written by Ida Friederike Görres, who was praised by Joseph Razinger for speaking “with an insightful certainty and a fearlessness about the pressing questions and tasks of the Church today…”

Articles

The Catholic World Report / January 12, 2026