Uniting
Research and Policy

Hisham Yousif is a 2023 graduate of the Harris School of Public Policy and an active-duty Armor officer in the U.S. Army. An Armor Officer by trade, he is currently on assignment as an Assistant Professor of American Politics in the Social Sciences Department of the United States Military Academy at West Point. 

While at Harris, he served as an intern with DT Institute's Stabilization, Transition, and Peacebuilding division and took part in the Pearson International Conflict Seminar in Northern Ireland.

Prior to his time at the University of Chicago, Yousif served as a troop commander in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. He was responsible for the welfare, training, and tactical employment of a 98-soldier troop replicating a near-peer mechanized threat at the National Training Center (NTC). He participated in over 18 brigade level exercises over three years designed to train U.S. Armored Brigades in full spectrum maneuver warfare in the Mojave desert.

Before Troop Command, Yousif’s service included a deployment to Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan with 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. He served as a civil-military advisor to the ground force commander in Jalalabad establishing key leader engagements with local Afghan security officers, government officials, and local elders before leading a security force platoon in support of Operation Resolute Support.        

Yousif holds a BA in international studies and Arabic from the Virginia Military Institute writing his thesis on the viability of South Sudan on the eve of its secession from Sudan.

Born in Dubai to Sudanese parents, he is fluent in Arabic and calls the great Commonwealth of Virginia home.