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This semester, the ������Ƶ Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP) welcomes Mustapha Hadji, a human rights researcher, who was first introduced to I-GMAP and ������Ƶ through co-director Kerry Whigham.

Hadji is here as part of the Charles E. Scheidt Resident Practitioner in Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Fellowship, which brings people worldwide to campus to raise awareness and discuss some of the most pressing global issues. From musicians to activists to researchers, the program welcomes people from all backgrounds to Binghamton to share their work and experiences.

“Three years ago, Kerry was planning a trip to Morocco and told me what he was trying to do. This is how I got to know about the Institute,” Hadji said. “Now, since I’m working on a similar kind of issue, [which] is memory, in the context of mass atrocities that occurred in Morocco, I see that my stay here for these three months [will be beneficial], and I already started to have discussions with many post-docs who are here, who work on almost similar issues, that I will learn other perspectives.”

Throughout his career and education, Hadji has researched issues related to transitional justice, democracy, human rights and immigration in North Africa. As a Charles E. Schedit Resident Practitioner, Hadji will get to reflect on his work, share his experiences, instruct and learn, and collaborate on new projects with academic and non-academic partners.

Hadji’s journey into topics like human rights and transitional justice was untraditional. He first started his academic career in the computer science department, where he earned the equivalent of an associate degree, but realized the field was not for him. He then tried economics and law in the Arabic branch, but the classes were so full that he could not find a seat to attend lectures. Lastly, he tried the French branch of law, where he could find a few empty seats and attend the classes, and that is where his journey began.

“Suddenly, the passion that was like something mundane, something just because I couldn’t find a seat, [turned into] something that I’m [very] passionate about now,” Hadji said. “After I got my undergrad degree in Morocco, I moved to the U.S., where I studied for a master’s degree at George Mason University, and then I got introduced to other topics, and the passion grew.”

Throughout his education, he studied many topics, but one that initially puzzled him was transitional justice, because he thought, “How could justice be transitional?” While working to complete his second master’s degree in Venice, Italy, he took a course in transitional justice, and his passion for the subject grew from there. After completing his master’s degree, he worked as a consultant for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), where he researched and wrote a study on transitional justice and prevention in Morocco.

Hadji’s work on this study for ICTJ was a turning point in his career, and why he is currently working on a PhD in Transitional Justice and Memory. “I discovered during this study that memory was kind of a taboo in the Moroccan context, or the government is not trying to save the sites of memory. So now I’m working on investigating how people remember, but through an intergenerational lens, [through] the first generation and the second generation, and what the state is doing or not doing to preserve memory.”

In addition to his work with ICTJ, he served as a program director for youth political participation at the National Democratic Institute, where he encouraged Moroccan youth to become more involved in politics. Some of this other work includes collaborating with the International Committee of the Red Cross as a field protection delegate, undertaking field missions that involved, among other things, protecting civilian populations affected by conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and conducting visits to high-security detention centers in Chad. Hadji is currently a PhD candidate at UCLouvain, a University in Belgium, and a researcher in the Law and Anthropology department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He looks to further his research and education here at ������Ƶ.

The Charles E. Schedit Resident Practitioner Fellowship invites resident practitioners to fully engage with the intellectual atmosphere of the institute and ������Ƶ. For more information on the Charles E. Schedit Resident Practitioner in Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Fellowship, you can visit this site.