Youssef brings over ten years of human rights experience and leadership to the CHRGJ and will champion this role alongside a talented team of scholars and advocates, working under the interdisciplinary direction of four faculty directors renowned in their fields.

Since joining the University of Dayton in 2013, Youssef became an integral part of its Human Rights Center founding team, and coordinated its communications and partnerships efforts, planning and managing a series of human rights programs and  fellowships, including four biannual Social Practice of Human Rights Conferences providing a collaborative space for global scholars and practitioners to forge alliance at the nexus of research and advocacy. 

His experience developing and managing the Malawi Research Practicum draws on transdisciplinary research and trained seven cohorts of students from across the university to conduct human rights research in northern Malawi. Youssef’s commitment to practice-based education and scholarship surfaced in courses he taught as a lecturer in the department of Political Science centralizing experiential learning and advocacy projects. Among those, a human rights studies capstone which he reframed through lenses of coaching, leadership and creative human rights practice. 

His most recent work as the diversity and social justice coordinator at the university led him to oversee course design and assessment working collaboratively across schools and units to integrate a scaffolded curriculum that enhanced diversity as an institutional learning goal.

 Prior to 2013, Youssef worked in development spaces with civil society organizations as well as the United Nations Development Programme and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Beirut, Lebanon as a multilingual researcher and coordinator for a series of programs in areas of education, social and economic rights, sustainability, and gender. 

“I strongly believe in the work of the CHRGJ,” says Farhat “as it presents a holistic strategic approach to human rights work; a framework firmly rooted in a much needed forward-looking vision.”