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[1][2] and democracy in the broader Middle East.[3][4] 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.[5] Partly for this reason, in recent years, he has attracted the new label of the "Rebel Prince."[6] In 2018, he publicly announced his desire to renounce his royal title and institutionally sever ties with the Moroccan monarchy.[7] 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.[8]
Founder and President of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation, a non-profit private foundation supporting social science research on the Arab world at leading global universities, among them College de France[29] and Gothenburg University,[30] as well as scholarly books on topics such as the political economy of Arab educational systems.[31]
Co-founder, along with John Waterbury and Abdellah Hammoudi, and principal donor of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (TRI) at Princeton University.[32]
Founder and principal donor of the Arab Reform and Democracy research program at Stanford University.[33]
Elections monitor for the Carter Center, observing the 1998-99 elections in Nigeria.[38]
Personal life
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."[39] As his father, Moulay Abdallah, died during his college education, the prince developed a close relationship with King Hassan.[40] He later attended Stanford University for graduate study, graduating in 1997 with an M.A. in political science. Many of these events are outlined in his memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni,[41] published in April 2014 to considerable controversy.[42]
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.[43] He was married in 1995 to Sharifa Lalla Malika Benabdelali, a cousin of the Moroccan businessman, RNI party luminary, and current Prime MinisterAziz Akhannouch. He has two daughters: Sharifa Lalla Faizah Alaoui (born 1996), who attended Yale University,[44] and Sharifa Lalla Haajar Alaoui (born 1999), who attended Princeton University.[45] 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.[46]
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.[47] 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.[48] 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.[49] 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.[50] 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.[51] 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.[52] In July 2021, the prince was revealed to be one of the targets of the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware as deployed by the Moroccan intelligence services.[53][54] In January 2023, he was expelled from Tunisia a second time for reasons believed to be political, after arriving to attend a conference organized by the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique.[55]
