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Sa'ed A. Atshan

Biography

Sa'ed Atshan was born in the United States and grew up in the West Bank. He attended the Ramallah Friends School, an institution founded over a century ago by American Quakers in Palestine. Sa'ed then returned to the U.S. and graduated from Swarthmore College in 2006 with a double major in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies.

While at Swarthmore, Sa'ed was an elected member of student government and a leader in the community, where he helped start several student groups and major initiatives. He was a Eugene M. Lang Scholar and received a $10,000 social change grant to organize a national conference for Palestinian students in the U.S. Sa'ed also spent his junior year abroad at the American University in Cairo and the American University in Beirut. Upon his return from Egypt and Lebanon, Sa'ed produced two undergraduate theses and was the first Arab-American to receive a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship.

As a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Sa'ed completed the Master in Public Policy program there in 2008. While at Harvard, Sa'ed served as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Government and was awarded a Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. He is now embarking upon a journey in the Joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies program at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Sa'ed has worked, in various capacities, for the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commission on Refugees, Human Rights Watch, Seeds of Peace, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and the Government of Dubai. His goal is to become a scholar-practitioner: teaching Middle Eastern Studies in the U.S. and pursuing development work in the Arab world.
 

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