Syrian- American educational exchanges under the Fulbright program
Syria-USA, Education, 1/25/2003

A panel discussion featuring former Syrian Fulbright students and professors and two current US Fulbright professors Waddah al-Khatib of Damascus University; Louay Chachati of the Unversity of Aleppo; Anthony Boyle of the state University of New York and Murray Eiland of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University was held on January 21st at the American Cultural center in Damascus. The event was attended by former Fulbright scholars and elite Syrian audience.

In a welcoming note the Director of the American Cultural Center in Damascus Liz Dibble, said that the Fulbright program was created in 1946 by Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas; he's the father of the program and it was named in honor of him. Since then, over 250,000 people have participated worldwide. It's a program to promote mutual understanding between the United States and the countries of the world, and it is a program where the awards, the grants, are based on merit. So, not surprisingly, "we've seen an enormous number of Fulbright alumni go on to become Ministers, Prime Ministers, Nobel prize winners, Pulitzer prize winners. It's a very distinguished list, and I know that in our audience tonight we have some very distinguished Syrian Fulbright alumni." The four Syrian and American professors discussed their educational experiences gained through the Fulbright Exchange program. Boyle said he was in Syria last year, and spent the year at Homs teaching at Al-Baath university. "One of my wonderful students is in the audience tonight, and I'm looking forward to meeting many of my students again. When I think about the importance of my year in Syria, I think first of my students, and of the excellence which they demonstrated in the classroom. And when I went back to the United States, I, of course, criticized my American students for not working as hard as some of my Syrian students, even though they had conditions that were so much more congenial to learning, " he said.

He added that the impact of the Fulbright program as it was conceptualized by Senator Fulbright was to promote not only international understanding, but also international peace. I think that when Americans come to your country or go to other countries that participate in the Fulbright program and then return home, they do become agents of peace. The message that they bring back is that people are essentially the same, that what separates us is unimportant, that what connects us should be stressed.

The four Syrians and American professors discussed their educational experiences gained through the Fulbright Exchange program and underpinned the importance of direct people-to-people talks in creating better understanding especially following the attacks of September 11 in the USA. Citing his experience in the USA as a fullbrighter Wadah Al-Khatib said " travelers in the Fulbright program, if I may call them so, temporary visitors to the other country, should work, should function as cultural ambassadors," recommending a Fulbrighter to expand his horizons and go with an open mind. Whatever expectations about the US, the American educational system, what kind of treatment you will or will not get -- whatever these expectations are, just go with an open mind, that a lot of them may not be true."

Eiland said " I'm based in Damascus, but I enjoy going out to other regions of Syria. I'm working both in the university and with the Ministry of Tourism. And, words cannot express how happy I am in Damascus. I was last in Syria in 1995, and I was here for several months in northeastern Syria at Tell Brak where I was living in a tent. And, everyday I was going out to excavate, and most evenings I would collapse in my tent without taking my clothes off, and maybe once a week I would have a shower, and it wouldn't be warm, it would be very cold. And this went on for month after month, and when I returned home, I had a very distinctive view of Syria, of course, and when I came back to Damascus I realized that my view of Syria was not, in fact, quite the way it really is."

Chachati said he was a Fulbright scholar from 2001 - 2002. "I went to the United States after the tragedy of September 11th. Going to the United States is, as you know, the dream of everybody. It's a country of freedom, a country of opportunity, a country of education, a country of science and technology, everything. I went to the United States after the tragedy of September 11th," he decried.

Replying to a question on stereotyping, Boyle said "My American friends think that I'm crazy to be in the Middle East. They think that I'm going to be murdered, assassinated. When I first came to Syria, I traveled with my wife, I think it was on September 13th. And on the flight over, there were people who sat next to my wife who told her that our throats would be cut and that we would bleed to death in the gutters of Damascus. I'm happy to report that they were incorrect. I think; nothing can be guaranteed.

"You might get into heated arguments with people whose views are different than yours, and you might have difficulty making them see the correctness of you viewpoint, but college campuses try to promote mutual respect and actually, it would probably be good if you were in the United States and could voice -- let's call it the Syrian perspective, the Arab perspective -- because Americans need to hear that and Americans would be interested in hearing from you.

"You know, American students for some reason are glassy-eyed when it comes to history, even American history. There's something about the way the society looks to the future that distracts them from looking at the present or the past. It reminds me when I'm here this evening of experiences that I've had in Europe.. I have very good European friends who will look me in the eye and say, 'Is an American degree worth anything?' Because they think that we're just ignorant. Actually, we like to go around saying that we don't know this or we don't do that. But there is some -- it may not stick in the minds of the students -- but if you look at the textbooks in the elementary and the secondary schools, you would see that there is discussion of this region. There might even be discussion that you might see as balanced of the conflicts that have raged rather recently. Conservatives in the United States might not approve of the kind of -- you know the Texas school board is a problem in America. The Texas government buys a lot of textbooks, so it has a great deal of power over what's in the books.

"I'm a New Yorker, and I've looked at New York history textbooks when my students were there, and my kids came home talking about the great civilizations of this region and dazzled me with my ignorance, just as they came home and talked about (DNA spelled out) and I had no idea what they were talking about. It may not stick, but it's in the curriculum. My own university is very concerned about students having a better knowledge about international affairs. So, we're constructing institutes for secondary school teachers that address various regions of the world that go overlooked. But there are a lot of people who demand attention in America, you know we have, as we note, a large Hispanic community, we have an expanding Asian community. They demand attention. The stereotypes are difficult to get rid of, of course. When you think of Arabs you think of rich Saudi Arabians you know -- oil, camels, horses, belly-dancers, perhaps. But we also know that -- I think that most of our students learn that this is the cradle of civilization. And that's why my friend here wants to encourage somehow people to come here as tourists and not just stay in Damascus. More tourists. He's looking at ways of expanding the horizons of tourism.

"Maybe we will get over these momentary difficulties. As I said a long time ago, the things that join us together are much stronger than the things that drive us apart, and that's what we have to.

Wadah: ".. Many American towns have universities, and there are many American towns that are really built around a university, there's something called International Speaker's Bureau where high schools and grade schools invite international scholars and students who are at the university to talk about their countries, their culture, their religion in the schools. I think I did this about 50 times. I think I was invited every year about four, five, six,. Seven times from four, five, six different high schools, grade schools in Charlottesville to go and do a presentation either about Islam or about the Arab world or about Syria or about art in my part of the world. I had to learn, I really had to re-learn some of these things in order to represent my culture and my heritage. But these programs are at least an indication that Americans are willing to learn and that they are eager to learn. So, do you convey the message to them or do you leave it for somebody else to do that. But these programs are all over the place in schools, and naturally if the school principal or the school district is asking you to come and speak to their students it means they want to educate these students, and this is where our role comes in. It becomes very important to go in and participate.

"American universities are often staffed -- some of the laboratories and some of the courses -- by graduate students, and professors have research assistants. I don't know the impact of the budgetary constraints now might reduce that, but to look carefully for other sources of funding besides the Fulbright program. And, also, I was in the British Council last night and on their bulletin board they have programs similar to the Fulbright program, and the Canadians, and the Australians, I'm sure. Look, there's a lot of talent in Syria. Talent needs to be nurtured. America can nurture some talent; England can nurture other talent. Some graduate students are here from the United States to be nurtured in Syria.

One American Fulbrighter here in Damascus addressed two of the key issues. The first being cultural exchange and second being some of the trepidation that some of the prospective Syrian Fulbrighters have about the situation in the U.S..

The first: cultural exchange. One of the benefits of the Fulbright program is its two-directional nature. That we have people like myself coming here to Damascus and other parts of Syria and other countries throughout the world to study language, to study the archeology, to study history to study culture among many other things. And that, I think, is what brings for the Fulbright program something back to an American curriculum. As most of us tend to be academics, we will wind up being in the universities, teaching about our experiences, about what we've learned about Islam, what we've learned about history, everything of that nature.

Murray: ". And, really, without tourism, without having people coming to Syria and looking to see what is here, this is greatly curtailed. This is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about getting numbers of people into Syria, to see what is here, and to see the range and the Syrian and the Arab point of view will come naturally from there. They become very natural ambassadors."

Question: I would like to talk about two things: personal safety in the U.S. after Septmeber 11th and personal safety in general.

answer: "I spent seven years in the United States, six years before September 11th and one year after. I think it will be very useful to share my experience with new Fulbrighters or new students interested in going to the U.S.

On the morning of September 11th, I was watching TV, and I knew difficult days were coming. But, I wasn't afraid at all for two reasons. The first reason was that I knew the American people enough to be sure that they would handle their anger in a civilized way, and the second reason was that I knew of the civil rights laws in the United States. Civil rights are a very important thing in the United States. No one can discriminate or hurt you based on your religion, race, ethnicity, anything you can think of. The hardest thing I got after that was: one time I was driving a car and a teenager was coming against me and he said, 'terrorist.' And I said something that I'm not going to mention now, but the other thing, I could have taken his license plate number, and he would have been in very big trouble. Look at it in this way; I was the one in power, he was the one in trouble. Don't let the events of September 11th and all its consequences discourage you from going to the United States. On the contrary: go to the United States. Our presence in the United States now is more important than ever."

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