Luma Simms
Fellow
Luma Simms, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies the life and thought of immigrants. As a humanist writer, she publishes on a broad range of topics, with a focus on the human (individual and communal), ethical, religious, and philosophical dimensions of immigration. She is particularly concerned with the crisis of rootlessness, identity, and dehumanization.
Luma Simms, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies the life and thought of immigrants. As a humanist writer, she publishes on a broad range of topics, with a focus on the human (individual and communal), ethical, religious, and philosophical dimensions of immigration. She is particularly concerned with the crisis of rootlessness, identity, and dehumanization.
Mrs. Simms’s essays, articles, and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications including National Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, The Point magazine, Public Discourse, Law and Liberty, the Institute for Family Studies, and others. She has been interviewed on Arabic television and American and Canadian radio on topics such as religious freedom in the Middle East, 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, anti-Semitism, and immigrant life and thought.
Some of Mrs. Simms’s notable essays include Identity and Assimilation at National Affairs; Immigration and the Desire for Rootedness at Public Discourse; I Am My Enemy: A Naturalized American Finds Herself at War with Her Homeland at Plough Magazine; 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; her parents and ancestors are from Mosul, and she speaks Arabic with a Moslawi dialect.
People and Their Relationships
Luma Simms
When our conception of relationships and relationship-building is based on a vision of the human person as an atomized choice maker who forms bonds for his or her benefit, we should not wonder why institutions decay. Our institutions are in crisis because we are in an identity crisis.
Articles
Public Discourse / March 12, 2020
The Need For a Humane Immigration Debate
Luma Simms
The immigration restrictionists at the turn of the 20th century were driven by eugenic doctrine, and they built their arguments on racial theories. So what do we do today with this legacy of the immigration restrictionists of old?
Articles
Law and Liberty / March 10, 2020
Persecution, True and False
Luma Simms
The key for Christians—from the beginning—has always been how they respond to trials and tribulations, and the most genuinely Christian responses historically have not been via force or politics but rather acts of care and love of neighbor.
Articles
Law and Liberty / December 23, 2019
If You Don’t Find Your Identity in a Family, You’ll Look For It in the…
Luma Simms
The ascent of identity politics reveals that people are having an identity crisis, and they are having an identity crisis because the sexual revolution resulted in family—and, by extension, individual—breakdown.
Articles
Public Discourse / September 3, 2019
Immigration and the Desire for Rootedness
Luma Simms
National conservatives need to help create an America that knows who she is, one that can give immigrants more than just a place to get a job—an America that can draw them in, giving them a sense of belonging.
Articles
Public Discourse / July 22, 2019
Conservative Women and the Intra-Conservatism Debate
Luma Simms
The men that are the standard-bearers of conservatism need to make a greater effort to cultivate conservative women’s voices in the public square.
Articles
Public Discourse / June 9, 2019
Iran’s Revolution Reconsidered
Luma Simms
Iran and the rest of the Middle Eastern world do not need any more revolutions or Western foreign policy interventions. They need a revolution of conscience: the moral power of human dignity.
Articles
Law and Liberty / February 20, 2019
Policy Change Alone Can Never Fix Our Immigration Problems
Luma Simms
Melting Pot or Civil War? offers what we might call economic solutions to what is fundamentally a human and cultural problem.
Articles
Law and Liberty / November 20, 2018
Immigrant Assimilation in the United States: Reihan Salam’s Melting Pot or Civil War?
Luma Simms
Our immigration crisis needs more than just policy. When making policy changes that relate to immigration, we need to consider the human cost.
Articles
Public Discourse / November 14, 2018
The Soul’s Need for Rootedness
Luma Simms
Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism is a much-needed pushback against modern globalists and imperialists who would erase human distinctions and offers a much-needed impetus to rethink current political paradigms.
Articles
Law and Liberty / October 9, 2018
