Shady ElGhazaly Harb

Professor Shady ElGhazaly Harb is a residential Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Prior to this role, he was a teaching fellow for Professor Hugh O’Doherty’s adaptive leadership course and a research assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Dr. ElGhazaly Harb is one of the most prominent political strategists and civil society leaders from the Egyptian Revolution during the Arab Spring. Alongside Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, he founded “AlDostour” (The Constitution) secular political party in 2012, and was active during all changes in government. His fight for representative democracy did not stop after the military overtook the government. He remained vocal against the subsequent crackdown, paying a personal price for his work and vision for a robust secular democratic political environment. The current regime imprisoned him for nearly two years in solitary confinement without trial from 2018 to 2020. Still, his lifetime goal remains to pursue the democratization of Egypt and the broader region to fulfill the dreams of the millions who took to the streets during the Arab Spring. His activism and analysis has been featured by numerous international media outlets, such as the BBC, Charlie Rose, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Concurrent to his position at the Harvard Kennedy School, he is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Cairo University. Dr. ElGhazaly Harb holds M.D., M.Sc. in General Surgery, Bachelor of Medicine, and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine. He was trained in liver surgery and transplantation at King’s College Hospital, London. In addition, he is a graduate of the mid-career master in public administration program at the Harvard Kennedy School with a certificate in management, leadership, and decision sciences. Recently, he has published articles in Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, and the Washington Post.