Printable Biography of Jehan Sadat

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Proponent of international peace, children’s welfare reform, women’s equality and education, Sadat has devoted her life to activism while also maintaining the legacy of her late husband, Anwar Sadat, former President of Egypt. Today she is a senior fellow with the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, a position from which she supports economic development, human rights, ethics and religious tolerance. She has been an Associate at Center for International Development and Conflict Management since 1988, where she led the way in the development of the Sadat Chair and played an active role in several of the Center's projects on international conflict management research.

Dr. Sadat has been involved in social work and women's movements in the Middle East since she was a young woman. Several years before she met her husband, former President of Egypt, the late Anwar Sadat, she had initiated a women's emancipation movement in Talla, Sadat's home village. She has since devoted much of her time to the establishment of the Wafa Wa Amal (Faith and Hope) Society in Egypt, established in 1972, which has constructed and now operates a fully integrated city for handicapped war veterans and civilians, complete with clinics, rehabilitation centers, national training programs, and recreation areas.

In 1977, Sadat initiated the idea of SOS Children's Villages in Egypt, offering needy orphans opportunities to lead normal family lives. She is a long-time national and international advocate of legal reform on the behalf of family affairs and women's equality, and has founded or headed many organizations and charitable associations, including the Egyptian Blood Bank and the Egyptian Society for Cancer Patients.

At the age of 40, Sadat entered Cairo University, earning her B.A. degree in Arabic Literature four years later and graduating at the top of her class. She has since earned both an M.A. degree (in 1980) and a Ph.D. degree (1986) from Cairo University and has been a Lecturer in Arabic Literature. Dr. Sadat has received 18 honorary doctoral degrees and a number of prestigious international awards, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from the United Nations Association of San Francisco and UNICEF's Children's Champion Award.