By Saba Naseem
A group of girls sit on red couches in Hotz Hall. Scarves of white, red, black and blue with simple designs cover their heads, some loosely thrown on, others tightly wrapped. Studying together, one girl follows the other’s finger with her large green eyes, darkly lined with khol. The others chatter away in Arabic, about school, their lives and their home countries.
These five girls represent a small picture of the diversity brought to the UA campus from the Middle East. There are 100 students enrolled this fall from 18 different countries in the Middle East, according to the fall enrollment report.
Just like these girls bring a part of their culture with them here, the King Fahd Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies brings a piece of Middle Eastern history, language and culture to the university community. Students experience this through the classes, colloquia, speakers and the cultural programs that the Middle East studies center sponsors.
The center was created in 1993 with a $25 million endowment by the Saudi government, the largest endowment given to a foreign country at that time. The endowment helped create concentrations from five different departments at the UA, and these were anthropology, geography, political science, history and English. Professors were brought from each department to help put together courses for the center.
“The Middle East is a region made up of many different aspects and we represent that diversity, unlike a lot of schools that just focus on political science,” said Tom Paradise, a UA geology professor and former director of the center. “We have teachers that are specialized in many different areas.”
Former President Bill Clinton played a big role in the establishment of this center, said Adnan Haydar, a UA Arabic professor and head of Middle East studies from 1993 to 1999. Clinton was governor at the time and he asked Prince Bandar, the brother of the king of Saudi Arabia, to help.
Haydar came to the UA in 1993 with a vision for the program that emphasized the modern Middle East and literary translations. At one point, Haydar had only 15 students and was teaching a total of 24 credit hours. The number of students who enroll in Arabic I now is around 64, Haydar said.
There was an increase of students interested in the Middle East because of America’s involvement there, especially in Iraq and Kuwait, with the Gulf War and, more recently, the Iraq War, Haydar said.
“It’s a politically favored language,” said Alia Biller, a psychology major and Middle East studies minor. “Learning Arabic gives a better understanding of the culture and history of the Middle East.”
Through the program, the campus has grown to accommodate students from the Middle East to study at the UA and to send American students to various universities in the Middle East, whether it is to study Arabic, anthropology, archeology, politics or art. This year, the center is supporting five students from Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey and Iran. Many students from the UA also plan to go or already have been to the Middle East.
“I’m planning to go to Syria in the summer to study archeology,” said Bilal Ziada, a sophomore anthropology and Middle East studies major. “I joined this center because it always seemed like my natural path.”
Another popular study abroad program in the Middle East is spending the semester at the university in Amman, Jordan. Biller had taken three semesters of Arabic before she went to Jordan in the spring of 2009.
The hardest part about studying in the Middle East was adjusting to the different culture and to their ideas, Biller said. They were very nice, but some of them got their ideas of American women based on TV shows like Desperate Housewives.
“I thought I was open minded before I went, but studying abroad really gave me a different sense of the world,” she said. It made “me more aware of the political situations going on there” which can be quite different than “perceptions that people get from the news and from movies here.”
The program encourages traveling to the Middle East and helps pay for the students who are majoring in Middle Eastern studies to study there. There were 41 Middle East studies majors and minors in 2009, a significant increase from the 28 total majors and minors in 2006. Since Middle Eastern Studies can only be a second major, these numbers aren’t as large as other majors offered. However, students from many different majors take classes involving the Middle East.
“Classes are filled because people are interested and curious,” said Joel Gordon, director of Middle Eastern studies. “Headlines generate class attendance especially since these students are looking for different perspectives.” Gordon teaches a survey of classes, but his specialties lie in Modern Middle East and Egyptology.
The center also brings in notable speakers who have experience in the Middle East or extensive knowledge about it. They recently brought in two speakers to discuss the Palestine and Israel issue, one that has been catching headlines for years.
“There is a growing openness in our community to want to understand and explore,” Gordon said. “Our common goal is to turn people’s horizons outward.”