Bard scholar, wife win humanitarian award
RED HOOK — As students left the Sayed alshohada school on May 8, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a car bomb and two other explosions killed at least 90 people and injured 240, the majority of them schoolgirls between 11 and 17 years old. Over the next few days, a crisis intervention team led by psychologists Sayed Jafar Ahmadi and Zeinab Musavi visited the school, nearby hospitals and the homes of the victims to provide mental health, trauma and grief support.
It was just another day in the life of the psychologists, who are married. Ahmadi and Musavi have provided counseling for victims of trauma, bombings, the COVID-19 pandemic and earthquakes in Afghanistan for two decades, and educated future psychologists along the way. Their work recently earned the American Psychological Association’s 2024 International Humanitarian Award, which recognizes “extraordinary humanitarian service and activism by a psychologist or a team of psychologists, including professional and/or volunteer work conducted primarily in the field with underserved populations.”
“They lost their friends or their family in this incident. But they (stood) and they continued, and they helped some other girls and it gave me a lot of motivation,” Musavi said of the 2021 car bombing. “Working with traumatized people, it’s very different. When I saw they could continue their life, it was very beautiful. It’s very meaningful (to) me.”
Ahmadi — who is a Bard College visiting faculty member and research scholar in psychology — and Musavi began their mission 20 years ago as students in Iran when they helped educate the children of Afghan refugees in “self-run” schools. In 2015, while teaching at Kabul Education University of Rabbani back in Afghanistan, they founded the Behrawan Research and Psychology Services Organization to provide counseling services to victims of war, educate future psychologists and conduct research.
Ahmadi and Musavi founded the nonprofit to help solve the problems they saw in their country. Decades of war have led to humanitarian and economic crises. More than 8 million Afghans have been displaced from their homes by conflict, violence and poverty, according to the United Nations, and millions of Afghans face famine.
When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, closing girls’ schools and prohibiting women’s access to higher education, Ahmadi and Musavi’s work went underground: They rented homes near schools where they continued to provide education, raising funds and facilitating opportunities for higher education for girls. Musavi’s voice fills with pride when talking about the 25 girls who are now studying in universities in different countries.
But their work could not continue in Afghanistan for long. Following threats from the Taliban, Ahmadi and Musavi fled to Germany in late 2021, where they stayed for six months until Ahmadi received a fellowship for scholars at risk from the Institute of International Education. Ahmadi was also awarded a fellowship from the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative from the Open Society University Network, co-directed by Thomas Keenan, who also runs Bard’s Human Rights Program. The fellowship is directed to scholars who are “forced to seek alternative teaching, research, or advanced study positions due to threats in their home countries.”
Ahmadi and Musavi arrived in the U.S. in May 2022 and he joined Bard College that spring as a research scholar in psychology. He has talked about his work in classes and seminars, and in the future, he will also teach some classes, combining that with his involvement at the American University of Afghanistan alongside Musavi.
“We could have hired him or brought him to Bard even if he didn’t have this whole Afghan background. But he also brings this experience to us, which is pretty rare, of having to make a major sacrifice in your life and your family’s life because you were doing something that you believed in,” Keenan said. “Having people like that on the campus of a small and otherwise sometimes isolated university is a real core value of our Threatened Scholars Initiative. We want these people to come not just as scholars, but as embodiments of the importance of doing real work in communities that is not necessarily popular.”
The formal presentation of the APA’S International Humanitarian Award, which includes an honorarium of $1,000, will take place during a virtual awards ceremony later this year.
“The contributions of Behrawan have not only saved lives but also restored hope and resilience in communities facing adversity,” Ahmadi said in a statement. “We hope that our legacy serves as an inspiration to psychologists and humanitarian organizations worldwide, emphasizing the profound impact that psychological services can have in times of crisis.”