Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco

rdf:langString Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco

rdf:langString Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui

rdf:langString Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui

rdf:langString Spouse

rdf:langString Prince Moulay Ismail

rdf:langString Prince Moulay Hicham pictured before a court in Casablanca

rdf:langString Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui

rdf:langString Dynasty

rdf:langString Sharifa Lalla Faiza Alaoui

rdf:langString Sharifa Lalla Hajar Alaoui

rdf:langString Lamia Solh

rdf:langString Malika Benabdelali

rdf:langString Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco (Arabic: الأمير مولاي هشام بن عبد الله, born 4 March 1964) is the first cousin of the current King Mohammed VI and Prince Moulay Rachid. He is the son of Prince Moulay Abdallah of Morocco, the late brother of former King Hassan II, and Princess Lalla Lamia Solh, daughter of Riad Al Solh, the first Prime Minister of Lebanon. He is also the cousin of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, whose mother Mona Al Solh is another daughter of the Lebanese family. Under the Moroccan constitution, Moulay Hicham stands fifth in the line of succession to the Alaouite throne. In his youth, Prince Moulay Hicham garnered the nickname "Red Prince" because of his progressive political positions. Since the 1990s, he has become an outspoken advocate for constitutional monarchy in Morocco and democracy in the broader Middle East. These controversial positions have distanced him from the Moroccan palace, and are thought to have created personal conflict with King Mohammed VI and other political forces. Partly for this reason, in recent years, he has attracted the new label of the "Rebel Prince." In 2018, he publicly announced his desire to renounce his royal title and institutionally sever ties with the Moroccan monarchy. In a widely watched January 2019 interview on BBC Arabic, the prince expressed his hope that while the Moroccan monarchy could eventually embark upon meaningful democratic reforms, he wished his role to be that of a scholarly advocate rather than a political figure. Prince Moulay Hicham regularly speaks on issues of human rights, democratic reform, and social movements at public forums around the world, among them the University of Málaga, HEC Paris, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Northwestern University, Tufts University, University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Yale University, as well as prominent broadcast media like BBC News and France 24. Since the 1990s, he has also published numerous essays on political reform, democracy, religion, culture, and development in the Middle East in English, French, and Arabic language journals and newspapers. During 2007-14, he served as a consulting professor at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford University. Since 2018, he has been based at Harvard University as a research associate at the Weatherhead Center.