ALUMNI IN ACTION
Nisreen Haj Ahmad MC/MPA 2008 On forthcoming outcomes of her fellowship...
A faculty research grant supported by MEI brought me to Harvard again to work with Professor Ganz on organizing and social movements. After I left HKS in 2008, Prof. Ganz and I continued bi-weekly coaching sessions to inform my work on collective action campaigns in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Over the last year, I worked with him on soonto-be published research. The research explores how organizing’s participatory distributed leadership model affects and is affected by a classical hierarchal model of leadership in the Middle East. Prof. Ganz and I studied 15 campaigns for which I provided coaching and support over the years in the region. We hoped to uncover how organizing helped achieve change, and we found that most of the participants focused on how organizing effected their understanding of leadership, their practice of sharing leadership, and how it all interacts with culture. This year, I also wrote a paper on lessons learned from 12
MOSAIC 2016-2017
Nisreen Haj Ahmad ’08 is the co-founder and co-director of Ahel, an organization that partners with community groups and organizations to lead collective action for freedom, justice, and protection of human rights in the Middle East. At Ahel, Nisreen and her colleagues train and coach activists and leaders in the organizing methodology developed by HKS Professor Marshall Ganz and his colleagues. Nisreen, a 2008 HKS alumna, returned to HKS in 2016 as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and an MEI affiliate. Nisreen discussed current projects, how her time at Harvard enhanced her research and work on the ground, and the future of organizing.
organizing for Palestine. I studied three campaigns and focused on: (1) balancing mobilizing and organizing, (2) organizing with an international dimension, and (3) the role of informal campaigns. On her time at HKS…
This was a pivotal year for me to be at Harvard and in the US. Trump was elected shortly after I arrived which caused a surge in organizing and social movements. Being here gave me access to see the counter Trump movement up close. Following the election, many groups approached Prof. Ganz for training to which I was invited as a coach. I saw how he presented and adapted the material for each group. It is a high point of activism in the US and a very exciting time to be here. As a fellow at the Ash Center I joined the Democracy Fellows Seminar every Thursday. We read about specific issues while relating it to Trump’s rise in the US and populism in Europe. It also gave me insight into research methodology,
honed my analytical skills, and provided a comparative perspective to examine human rights and democracy. As an MEI affiliate I also attended MEI events and engaged critically with the fellows here. Their research and perspective enhanced my work. MEI hosted a lunch with President Marzouki, Tunisia’s president from 2011-2014, where he spoke openly about alliance building and protecting democracy. This spring Prof. Ganz and I had the opportunity to run a community organizing workshop with Harvard Arab students. It was powerful to realize the potential of their collaboration if they organize well. I continue to work with them and can’t wait to hear about their successes. I also organized a semester long seminar on social movements, the first of its kind at HKS. With Prof. Ganz’s insight, we constructed a strong syllabus. It required me to stay up-to-date on the latest literature and track ongoing and evolving trends.