Rashad Hussain is an American attorney, diplomat, and professor, who currently serves as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He previously served as associate White House counsel, as U.S. Special Envoy of President Barack Obama to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and the U.S. Special Envoy for strategic counterterrorism communications. Hussain has also served on the United States National Security Council and in the Department of Justice as a trial attorney and a criminal and national security prosecutor.
Early life and education
Hussain was born in Wyoming and was raised in Plano, Texas, the son of Indian-American immigrants. His father, Mohammad Akbar Hussain, was a mining engineer. His mother Ruqaiya, his older sister Lubna and his younger brother Saad are medical doctors. Hussain is a graduate of Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas. While at Greenhill, Hussain was a member of the school's nationally recognized policy-debate team, partnering with Josh Goldberg to win the Texas state debate championship and a number of national competitions.
Hussain completed a bachelor's degree in two years, in both philosophy and political science, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His philosophy thesis was titled "Assessing the Theistic Implications of Big Bang Cosmological Theory." He subsequently obtained an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Master's degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, both from Harvard University. After Harvard, he worked as a legislative aide for the House Judiciary Committee, where he served during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and reviewed the Patriot Act and other bills. He then earned a J.D. from Yale Law School where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
He was a 2003 Fellow of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Following law school, Hussain served as a law clerk for civil rights icon Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Career
Office of White House Counsel
In January 2009, Hussain was named deputy associate counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously, he served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and as Associate Counsel to the Obama Presidential Transition Team.
The Washington Post reported that, "After the 2008 election, Hussain was recruited to the White House Counsel's office by Greg Craig and Cassandra Butts, a fellow Tar Heel and Obama's former Harvard Law classmate. He has worked there on national security and new media issues, and helped inform the administration's Muslim outreach efforts.
Hussain also "began advising the president on issues related to Islam after joining the White House counsel’s office in January 2009." Ben Rhodes, Obama's chief foreign policy speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor, sought Hussain's counsel as he drafted the president's Cairo address and other speeches to Muslim audiences. Hussain also joined the President and the staff that traveled to Egypt for the speech at Cairo University in 2009.
U.S. Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
On February 13, 2010, President Obama appointed the 31-year old Hussain as the United States Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Upon appointing the 31-year old White House attorney as one of the youngest posted American ambassadors and highest ranking Muslim American officials Obama stated: "as an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff, Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo, and as a Hafiz of the Quran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work." The Washington Post stated in addition to his personal background, "Muslims abroad are ... likely to take note of his White House credentials, and access to the Oval Office, as he seeks partnerships in education, health, science and technology."
It also noted that Hussain "briefed Obama before his first interview as president--with Al Arabiya, contributed to Obama's two major speeches to Muslims--in Ankara, Turkey and Cairo, traveled to the Middle East with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and, closer to home, helped organize a Ramadan dinner at the White House that replaced the usual crowd of ambassadors with young American Muslims." He also helped put on a 2010 Presidential Global Entrepreneurship Summit hosted by President Obama.