Hassan Hassan

Hassan Hassan (born 1982) is an American author and journalist of Syrian origin. He co-wrote the 2015 New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror with Michael Weiss. He has written on Islamist groups in the Middle East. He frequently appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Amanpour and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, and has written for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and The Daily Beast. Hassan is the founder and editor-in-chief of New Lines Magazine, a global affairs magazine.

Background Hassan is from the town of Al-Shaafah in Al-Bukamal District, Deir ez-Zor Governorate, in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. In 1996, he moved from ash-Sha'fa to the city of Al Bukamal for high school.

In 2000, he moved to Damascus to study English literature at Damascus University. In 2006, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he completed an MA in International relations at the University of Nottingham.

Career

Journalism After graduation, Hassan moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2008 to work as a news reporter for the then newly-launched English-language daily The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, covering domestic and Gulf affairs. His research on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) included extensive interviews with members of the organization since its rise in his home region in June 2014. In addition, Hassan has written for The Guardian, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and the Daily Beast. European Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Brookings Institution, and University of Oxford's Gulf studies forum.

He previously worked as an associate fellow at Chatham House, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, He was also a research associate at the Delma Institute in the United Arab Emirates. In 2019, Hassan Hassan left George Washington University after Lorenzo Vidino tried to prevent him from publishing an article about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. After the article was nevertheless published, Vidino reportedly contacted the editorial team at The Atlantic and requested that any mention of Hassan’s employer be removed from his author biography—particularly in articles that were critical of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Hassan is a director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a think tank in Washington D.C. a widely covered hearing. In February 2017, he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on defeating terrorism in Syria.

Publications

Books In 2015, Hassan authored a book with Michael Weiss on the rise of the militant group ISIS, titled ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. His book was chosen by The Wall Street Journal as one of 10 must-read works on the evolution of terrorism in the Middle East, one of the London Times Best Books of 2015, and The New York Times Editors' Choice in April 2015. The book was reviewed favorably twice in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. The Times chief book critic, Michiko Kakutani, said the book gave readers "a fine-grained look at the organization’s evolution through assorted incarnations." It has been translated into over a dozen languages.

New Lines Magazine Hassan founded New Lines Magazine, a global affairs magazine, in October 2020. Since then, he has acted as its editor-in-chief. The magazine was initially launched by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy to showcase the best writing from the Middle East. Hassan told the Reuters Institute in 2021 that the magazine was launched in response to Western journalists’ reliance on outdated views of the Middle East, which pervades coverage of the region.

In September 2022, Hassan announced that the magazine was broadening its coverage to publish stories from around the world.

Harvard University’s Nieman Lab describes New Lines Magazine's mission as "to serve audiences that want to read long-form, narrative journalism," with an emphasis on "local reporting from journalists and experts". The magazine has included regular contributions from journalists Clarissa Ward, Arwa Damon and Hala Gorani, and public figures Robert Ford, Syrian intellectual Mustafa Khalifa and musician Alex Skolnick.