A former Los Angeles gang member, a former skinhead and a former radical Islamist sit before young people at a youth center, sharing how they entered extremism—and how they left it. For Farah Pandith, those conversations can carry a force that official warnings often lack. “They’re the most authentic and credible voices there are,” she says.
Pandith, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, has spent decades trying to understand why people are drawn to beliefs that divide the world into “us versus them.” Her aim is to help prevent that turn toward hatred before it leads to violence. That matters, she says, because prevention is “infinitely easier than dealing with the fallout.” It also means paying attention to what people may be seeking: recognition, certainty or a sense of belonging.
“You don’t suddenly explode and become an extremist overnight,” Pandith says. “You’re having some self-doubt, you’re asking questions about who you are.” She argues that communities need to hear those questions and build trust, rather than assume that a warning or a message from government will change someone’s mind.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, helped set her on this path. Watching the planes hit the World Trade Center, she felt compelled to help prevent more violence. She was also troubled by extremists claiming to speak for Islam. To Pandith, her faith means humility, compassion and respect for others—not hatred.
Her approach grew from work on the ground. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, she saw that policy works best when it reflects what local people say they need. “You have to listen really well to find a solution that matches with the local community,” she says. “Trust has to be built first.”
In 2004, Pandith joined the National Security Council, where she worked alongside Joseph Nye on the “soft power” side of the U.S. effort against terrorism. She believed military action could disrupt extremist groups but could not stop them from recruiting new members. Public relations campaigns, meanwhile, struggled to overcome distrust among Muslims worldwide. Pandith calls her answer “open power”: listening closely, including to people whose views had been ignored, and being willing to hear criticism.
That lesson became painfully clear during a brief stay in Kabul in 2004, when photographs emerged of abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. Local people asked how she could represent a government that had treated Muslim prisoners that way. Pandith says the images damaged efforts to build trust. She took the experience as a reminder that honest engagement means sitting through uncomfortable conversations, not avoiding them.
In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed Pandith the first U.S. special representative to Muslim communities. Rather than treat Muslim communities as one audience, she traveled to meet people in homes, mosques and other community settings. Over her career, she has visited more than 100 countries, from Belgium to Bangladesh, studying how the path toward violence can be interrupted.
Today, she applies those lessons to the wider work of making compassion practical. Last year she received the ADL Daniel Pearl Award for her contribution to understanding between Jews and the Muslim world. Her work points to a simple but demanding idea: preventing hate starts by listening early, building trust and making room for people to tell their own stories.