![[Farid Hafez]](https://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-04-at-10.45.01-AM.jpeg "Farid Hafez")
The Bridge Initiative is a multi-year research project on Islamophobia housed in Georgetown University.
The Bridge Initiative aims to disseminate original and accessible research, offers engaging analysis and commentary on contemporary issues, and hosts a wide repository of educational resources to inform the general public about Islamophobia.
Research & Resources
The Far Right in Europe: How promising is Steve Bannon’s European organization ‘The Movement’?
Bannon’s global agenda “Patriots of the world, unite!” were the words of Steve Bannon speaking to the delegates of the Front National’s (today Rassemblement National) party convention in Lille in March 2018. Saying this, Bannon clearly stepped beyond his invention of what became the winning slogans for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — “America First” and…
Is ACT for America really a grassroots organization?
Isabelle Canaan recently completed her MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government) at the University of Oxford. Her Masters thesis explored social movement trajectory, employing a case study of ACT for America. Using interview and primary source data, Canaan argued that the dual-hatted nature of ACT’s protest cycle explains the group’s attempts to maintain a grassroots presence while…
Austria’s next Islamophobic policy: Banning the hijab in kindergarten
This op-ed by Senior Research Fellow Farid Hafez originally appeared in Daily Sabah. When the Christian-democratic conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) together with the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) formed a coalition government last December 2017, a new regulation was announced. The government argued that it would ban the hijab for Muslim pupils from kindergarten…