Luma Simms

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.