Mubarak Awad

Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and an advocate of nonviolent resistance.

Awad, a Palestinian Christian (a member of the Greek Orthodox Church), was born in 1943 in Jerusalem when it was under the British Mandate. When Awad was five years old, his father was killed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and he became a refugee in the Old City of Jerusalem. His mother was a pacifist and argued against revenge. He was given the right to Israeli citizenship in 1967 when East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the Six-Day War but refused and kept his Jordanian citizenship.

Mennonite and Quaker missionaries influenced Awad's views in his youth. In the 1960s he moved to the United States to study at the Mennonite Bluffton University and received a BA in social work and sociology. He went on to obtain an MS in education from Saint Francis University and a PhD in psychology from the International Graduate School of Saint Louis University.

He was granted U.S. citizenship in 1978 and settled in a small town in Ohio.

Awad was the founder and former president of the National Youth Advocate Program (NYAP) in the United States. The organization developed from the Ohio Youth Advocate Program (OYAP) established by Awad in 1978 with support from the Ohio Youth Commission (now the Department of Youth Services), the state department responsible for finding placements for "at risk" youth referred to the state from county juvenile courts.

...
Wikipedia