Dr. Huda was a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA) where he focused on a variety of religious issues and their intersection with US foreign policy. He specializes in political religion civil society organizations, education policies and security issues within the Muslim world. He served as a secondee for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism as the first Director of the Department of Dialogue and Collaboration to Hedayah: The International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Dr. Huda worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) headquarters in Washington, DC, as a senior expert and scholar of Islam focused on conflict resolution, peace-building research, countering violent extremism and field-training to civil society members. He supervised and managed the development of the field of conflict resolution and mediation studies in religious and public schools in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He is Editor of Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam (USIP Press).
Dr. Huda was listed in the “Muslim 500: The World’s Most Influential Muslims” in 2016, 2017 and 2018 published by The Royal Strategic Islamic Centre in Amman, Jordan. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Conflict Resolution Graduate Program and published over forty-five articles on peace-building, conflict resolution, violent extremism, comparative ethics, Islamic law, and educational reform in academic journals and mainstream newspapers. He is the recipient of research grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), American Academy of Religion, UCLA’s International Security Studies program, and was a Fulbright Scholar. He earned his doctorate from UCLA in the History of Islam & Middle Eastern Studies and a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University in International Relations & Philosophy and Religion.
During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, coalition forces –particularly the U.S. military – acknowledged that eliminating terrorism through a military response is impossible. Moving from a kinetic military approach, strategists, policymakers, and counterterrorism experts focused on countering violent extremism (CVE) practices and the use of civil society to put those practices in motion.
The coronavirus pandemic is President Donald Trump’s 9/11 — but rather than identifiable terrorists to target, there is an invisible virus threatening global stability. This crisis will test the president’s ability to rely on his experts and to acknowledge and rectify his errors.
Dr. Huda was a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs
