Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco

• Founder and President of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation, a non-profit private foundation supporting social science research on the Arab world at leading universities,[28] such as the Arab Reform and Democracy program at Stanford.[29]
• Co-founder, along with John Waterbury and Abdellah Hammoudi, of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (TRI) at Princeton University.[30]
• Founder and principal of Al Tayyar Energy, a renewable energy firm with major investments in Thailand and other developing nations.[31]
• Principal officer for United Nations peacekeeping missions, most prominently in Kosovo in 2000.[32]
• Advisory Board Member of the Middle East program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[33]
• Numerous past advisory positions for pro-democracy NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and the Carter Center.
• Producer of the 2012 award-winning documentary on democratization and dictatorship, A Whisper to a Roar, in collaboration with director Ben Moses.[34]

As a member of the Moroccan royal family, Prince Moulay Hicham was raised in the palace quarter of Rabat alongside his brother and cousins, including the current King Mohammed VI. He attended the Rabat American School and graduated from Princeton University in 1985 with an A.B. in an independent concentration after completing a 137-page senior thesis titled "Sources of Success and Failure in the Palestinian National Movement."[35] As his father, Moulay Abdallah, died during his college education, the prince developed a close relationship with King Hassan.[36] He later attended Stanford University for graduate study in political science. Many of these events are outlined in his memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni,[37] published in April 2014 to considerable controversy.[38]

In 2002, Prince Moulay Hicham relocated to Princeton, New Jersey with his family due to political tensions with King Mohammed VI and other elements of the Moroccan monarchy.[39] He is married since 1995 to Sharifa Lalla Malika Benabdelali, a cousin of the Moroccan businessman, longtime Minister of Agriculture, and RNI party luminary Aziz Akhannouch. He has two daughters: Sharifa Lalla Faizah Alaoui (born 1996) who attended Yale University,[40] and Sharifa Lalla Haajar Alaoui (born 1999) who attends Princeton University. In 2014, he began pursuing a D.Phil. research degree in Middle East studies at the University of Oxford, which he successfully defended in February 2020.[41]

Prince Moulay Hicham's positions have often instigated outside pressures, including personal and financial threats, as well as smear campaigns in Morocco's state-run media sector.[42] In August 2012, Moroccan MP Abdelhadi Khairat accused him of financial embezzlement, a charge that instigated a successful defamation lawsuit and Khairat's eventual apology for the allegations.[43] In May 2014, the French police arrested an individual on stalking charges at Orly Airport, who in turn claimed that several Moroccans had asked him to monitor the prince's movements.[44] In September 2017, he was controversially deported from Tunisia while scheduled to speak at an academic conference held by Stanford University for reasons suspected to be politically motivated.[45] In November 2018, he won a major libel trial in the United Kingdom against the Arabic-language Elaph media outlet, which had published a story accusing him to have plotted against the Moroccan monarchy.[46] That case was also notable in compelling British courts, in the wider context of UK law, to clarify and deepen the meaning of defamation within electronic publications.[47]

• Moulay Hicham Selected Writings (Official Website)
• Moulay Hicham Foundation for Social Research on North Africa and the Middle East