Farris Hassan (born July 30, 1989) is an American who at 16 years old, while a junior at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, took an unaccompanied trip to Iraq. He said he was inspired by a personal attachment to the situation in Iraq and an English class having a project on "immersion journalism". Global news outlets reported that Hassan left home for Iraq without telling his parents. Hassan's parents, now divorced, are Iraqi-born but immigrated to the United States, where they have lived for 35 years.