When she was president, the union fought for gender and race equity, and in 2019 won a contract that AFT president, Randi Weingarten, said “will inspire higher education professionals across [the] country to fight and win their own battles to improve their lives – and the lives of others – in the streets and at the bargaining table.” [3] Kumar has a master's degree in Mass Communication from Bowling Green State University after earning her post-bachelor's B.S.

[2] Kumar's 2008 book Outside the Box looks at the need for a critical analysis of how labor struggles are presented and packaged by the corporate media by examining the United Parcel Service strike of 1997, led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The second edition (2021) titled Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: 20 Years after 9/11 traces the history of anti-Muslim racism from the early modern era to the War on Terror.

[11] She states that Islamist parties have risen to prominence over the last three decades of the 20th century for various reasons: "the active role played by the U.S. in posing Islam and political Islam as an alternative to secular nationalism and the left; persistent imperial intervention and domination; internal weakness that led to the decline of secular nationalist and various left parties, creating an ideological vacuum that Islamists were able to occupy; economic crises and its exacerbation under the neoliberal era, which present an economic opening for Islamists and their charitable networks.

While she critiques its "reactionary" politics and attitudes towards women as well as its policing of "immorality," she points out that it came to power through generally recognized free and fair elections in 2006.