Hanan Ashrawi

Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi (حنان داوود مخايل عشراوي; born 8 October 1946) is a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar.

Ashrawi began her career at Birzeit University.

Ashrawi was born to Palestinian Christian parents on 8 October 1946 in the city of Nablus, British Mandate for Palestine, now part of the occupied West Bank.

Her father, Daoud Mikhail, was a physician and one of the founders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and her mother Wadi’a Ass’ad Mikhail, was an ophthalmic nurse.

Hanna Mikhail, a scholar and Fatah revolutionary, was her cousin.

The Ashrawi family lived in Nablus.

Then from Nablus, her family moved to the warm city of Tiberias in the north where they remained until Israel became a state in 1948.

In 1948, the Mikhail family fled from Tiberias to Amman, Jordan as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Initially, her father, Daoud Mikhail, remained behind in what became Israel, but later rejoined the family in Jordan.

In 1950 her family were able to settle in Ramallah, at the time part of the Jordanian annexed West Bank.

Here, she attended the Ramallah Friends Girls School, a Quaker school for girls.

She was inspired to activism by her father, who favored a greater role for women in society and was repeatedly imprisoned by the Jordanian authorities for his activities with the Arab Nationalist Socialist Party and the PLO.

She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in literature in the Department of English at the American University of Beirut (AUB).

While a graduate student in literature at the American University in Beirut she dated Peter Jennings of ABC News who was then stationed there as ABC's Beirut bureau chief.

When the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, Dr. Ashrawi, then a 22-year-old student in Lebanon, was declared an absentee by Israel and denied re-entry to the West Bank.

For the next six years, Ashrawi traveled and completed her education gaining a Ph.D. in Medieval and Comparative Literature from the University of Virginia.

Ashrawi was finally allowed to re-join her family in 1973 under the family reunification plan.

Ashrawi returned to the West Bank under the family reunification plan in 1973 and established the Department of English at Birzeit University.

She served as Chair of that department from 1973 to 1978, and again from 1981 through 1984; and from 1986–1990 she served the university as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.

On 8 August 1975, she married Emile Ashrawi, a Christian Jerusalemite who is now a photographer and a theater director.

They have two daughters.

Ashrawi is the recipient of eleven honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Arab world.

Beginning in the 1990s, Ashrawi was a member of the PLO's Leadership Committee, serving as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.

As a civil society activist, she founded the Independent Commission for Human Rights in 1994 and served as its Commissioner-General until 1995.

Her book This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995) earned worldwide recognition.

Moreover, she is the recipient of eleven honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Arab world.

She remained a faculty member at Birzeit University until 1995, publishing numerous poems, short stories, papers and articles on Palestinian culture, literature, and politics.

In 1996, Ashrawi was appointed as the Palestinian Authority Minister of Higher Education and Research.

Ashrawi was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem in 1996 and was re-elected in 2006.

In 1998, she also founded MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, and she continues to serve as head of its board of directors.

In 1999, Ashrawi founded the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN).

Ashrawi is the recipient of numerous awards from all over the world, including the French decoration, “d'Officier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur” in 2006; the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation; the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize; the 2002 Olof Palme Prize; the 1999 International Women of Hope “Bread and Roses”; the Defender of Democracy Award – Parliamentarians for Global Action; the 50 Women of the Century; the 1996 Jane Addams International Women’s Leadership Award; the Pearl S. Buck Foundation Women’s Award; the 1994 Pio Manzu Gold Medal Peace Award; and the 1992 Marissa Bellisario International Peace Award.

She is the author of several books, articles, poems and short stories on Palestinian politics, culture and literature.

These include: The American University of Beirut (AUB) – Lebanon (June 2008); The American University in Cairo (AUC), Doctor of Humane Letters – Cairo, Egypt (June 2003); Saint Mary’s University, Doctor of Civil Law – Halifax, Canada (October 2000); Smith College, Doctor of Humane Letters – Northampton, Massachusetts (1999); Earlham College, Doctor of Humane Letters – Richmond, Indiana (1999); Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Belgium (1997); Bath University, Doctor of Laws – Bath, England (1993); and The Virginia Theological Seminary – Alexandria, Virginia (1993).

She is a member of various international advisory boards and councils.

Her past and present memberships include the following: U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP); TAKREEM Arab Achievement Awards; Center for Transregional Studies "Advisory Council" – Princeton University; Council on Foreign Relations – Washington D.C.; Deir Yassin Remembered – New York; Fund for the Future of Our Children – Washington D.C.; Initiative for Peace and Cooperation in the Middle East – Special project of The Search for Common Ground; International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty; International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)- Stockholm, Sweden; Member of the UN Secretary General’s Group for Dialogue Among Civilizations; Mercy Corps International – WashingtonPeace Works – U.S.; Task Force on Higher Education (A World Bank, Harvard University and UNESCO initiative); The Carter Center (Human Rights Center); The Dialogue Center – The Netherlands; The World Bank Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA); United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD); Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD); The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation – Know Thy Heritage Advisory Board; CAABU – Honorary Patron; Beyond Conflict (formerly The Project on Justice in Times of Transition) – New York, U.S.; and the UN Women Executive Directors Civil Society Advisory Group.

She was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2009 and 2018, becoming the body's first female member.

On 26 September 2009, in an interview on Riz Khan's One on One on Al Jazeera English, Ashrawi defined her current role in the following way: "I think of myself essentially as a human being with a multidimensional mission. Basically, I am a Palestinian, I am a woman, I am an activist and a humanist, more than being a politician. And at the same time I feel that quite often things are thrust upon us rather than come as a result of a calm and deliberate choice."

While voluntarily a student but denied re-entry to the West Bank, she became the spokesperson for the General Union of Palestinian Students in Lebanon, helped organize women’s revolutionary groups and served as a guide to foreign reporters visiting Palestinian refugee camps.

She resigned in 2020.