1. Malia Mazia Bouattia was born on 22 October 1987 and is the former president of the National Union of Students of the United Kingdom, elected at the National Conference in April 2016.
18 Facts About Malia Bouattia
1. 2.
Malia Bouattia was the first female Black British and Muslim leader of the NUS.
3.
Malia Bouattia is currently a presenter on the British Muslim TV panel show Women Like Us.
4.
Malia Bouattia's father is an Algerian academic who now works for an international management consultancy.
5.
Malia Bouattia attended the University of Birmingham where she read cultural studies with French, followed by an MPhil in post-colonial theory.
6.
Malia Bouattia served two years as Black Students' Officer of the National Union of Students.
7.
Malia Bouattia pushed for greater ethnic diversity amongst NUS candidates and campaigned for the establishment of a permanent officer for transgender students.
8.
Malia Bouattia later supported a second motion condemning crimes by ISIS, as well as Islamophobia in general.
9.
Malia Bouattia has spoken extensively about her North African ancestry and her racial identity as a black woman.
10.
In May 2016, Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff in the New Statesman argued that Malia Bouattia was not black, noting that her self-identification as black was based on the concept of "political blackness", which Brinkhurst-Cuff defined as part of a tendency by some people of colour to adopt "blackness" as an inclusive term for nonwhites generally.
11.
Brinkhurst-Cuff nonetheless welcomed Malia Bouattia's appointment, and distinguished her case from that of Rachel Dolezal on the grounds that Malia Bouattia was a woman of colour who was honest about her ancestry.
12.
At the 2016 NUS conference Malia Bouattia ran for the position of president against incumbent Megan Dunn with a campaign slogan of "For a strong transformative union".
13.
Malia Bouattia opposed Dunn's plans to end the NUS' relationship with the human rights organisation CAGE, which Bouattia had defended in July 2015 against David Cameron's accusation that it is an "extremist" group.
14.
Malia Bouattia stated that she would place greater emphasis on global politics.
15.
Malia Bouattia attracted criticism for appearing to suggest that non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation is a limited option.
16.
On 13 March 2017, Malia Bouattia announced that she was running for a second term as NUS President.
17.
The NUS Vice-president for further education Shakira Martin ran against her, as well as Durham student Tom Harwood, who stood on a conservative platform and lampooned the NUS and Malia Bouattia's "irrelevant grandstanding" in his somewhat satirical campaign literature.
18.
Malia Bouattia gained 402 of the 721 votes cast by delegates, while Bouattia received 272 and Harwood 35.