Farah Pandith on Office Hours

Farah Pandith (@Farah_Pandith), Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project and formerly the first ever Special Representative to Muslim communities at the U.S. State Department, sits down with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) to talk about how to curb the spread of violent extremism, particularly among Muslim youth.

Farah Pandith is a diplomatic entrepreneur and foreign policy strategist. In addition to serving as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, she is currently a member of Secretary Jeh Johnson’s Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) and chairs its subcommittee on countering violent extremism (CVE). She is also a Commissioner and Strategic Advisor on the Center for Strategic and International Studies CVE Commission. She focuses on driving efforts to counter extremism through new organizations, programs and initiatives, most notably Halcyon, a new innovative global organization she has co-founded dedicated to mobilizing youth against extremist ideologies.

Ms. Pandith has served as a political appointee in the George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama administrations. Ms. Pandith was appointed the first-ever special representative to Muslim Communities in June 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, serving under both Secretaries Clinton and John Kerry. The Office of the Special Representative was responsible for engaging with Muslims around the world both organizationally and individually. In January 2013, she was awarded the Secretary's Distinguished Honor Award.