Harvard Law Review elects its first Muslim president

The Harvard Law Review in the United States has elected Hassaan Shahawy, a Los Angeles born and bred Egyptian American, as the first Muslim president in its 134-year history.

Jennifer Heath, the programme administrator and information systems manager at the publication, confirmed that Shahawy is the first Muslim president.

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Founded in 1887 by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the Harvard Law Review is a student-edited law journal with the largest circulation of any law journal worldwide, according to Harvard University.

A second-year law student at Harvard Law School, Shahawy first served as a general editor for the law review for six months before he decided to run for president this past January.

“It’s very humbling of course, to have a Muslim elected in a positive way,” Shahawy said.

He currently works at the MacArthur Justice Center providing legal representation to incarcerated individuals in criminal appeal cases. Shahawy’s passion for criminal justice reform stems from his experience as an undergraduate at Harvard, where he visited and worked with incarcerated individuals in local jails in Boston who were working to earn college credit.

After graduating Harvard in 2016, Shahaway was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and majored in Oriental Studies and specialized in Islamic Law at Oxford University.