26 October 2001

Student Colloquium Addresses Arab-American Relations

Washington -- Twenty Arab Fulbright students from 11 nations sat down October 26 and 27 with 20 U.S. students from the University of Maryland to discuss their reactions to the September 11 events, as well as Arab-American relations broadly. The result was a mix of heated debate, humor and personal anecdotes that challenged the stereotypes the two groups held of each other.

Riham Bahi, an Egyptian student on a Fulbright scholarship at Northeastern University, said the event elicited important discussion and debate. "The point is that you hear the other party's view, and it gives you a chance to respond and clarify points. Despite what conflict you have between governments, people can always try to understand each other. That's really important now."

The two-day colloquium was one of several events on college campuses nationwide aimed at opening up discussion about race relations and other issues resulting from the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. AMIDEAST, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening understanding between Americans and people of the Middle East, sponsored the colloquium, which featured sessions such as "Mutual Perceptions of the Two Societies" and "Sources of Perceptions."

Several U.S. students remarked that their first impressions of Arabs came from the media, including Hollywood movies and television news clips of anti-American protests. Arab students said their first impressions of Americans came from the media as well as family discussions and occasional personal contact with Peace Corps volunteers.

Amal Almurbati, a student from Bahrain attending Old Dominion University as a Fulbright scholar, said that both Arabs and Americans have misperceptions of each other because of biased and inaccurate media coverage. Journalists "don't always look into issues or do research on the countries" they cover, he said. "They don't show beyond one dimension that might be negative."

"I was expecting the U.S.A. I had imagined from movies, but when I arrived in Florida I realized it's not all tall buildings and people who have everything they could want," Nadia Abdulhaq, a Fulbright scholar at the University of Florida, said. "I think our images of each other are far simpler than reality."

Abdulhaq, a Palestinian from Gaza, spoke from her personal experience about the importance of face-to-face discussion. "I live in Palestine, and though we are in conflict with Israel, I have attended camps with Israeli teens," she said. "My father was imprisoned, but he still had Israeli friends. We did discuss things fiercely, but we got a perspective on what's going on."

"Fear of the unknown is the problem," Abdulhaq added. Several others agreed that children should be educated from a young age about other cultures and regions so that they are not prone to believing stereotypes of each other.

A Jordanian student at the University of Nebraska, Mahmoud Khliefat said that only through dialogue can Arabs and Americans understand each other. "We can understand each other through talking, but when we don't go through that channel, we are misperceived," he said. "We need to talk - Israelis and Palestinians are in conflict again, but we are still talking."

Jarrod Hyman, an American student at the University of Maryland, said both Arabs and Americans need to combat racism before they can truly understand each other. "Racism comes from hatred, hatred from fear," he said. "We can't afford to be afraid of talking out the issues."

"We need to work on resolving conflicts for the next generation," said Khaled Ishaq, a Yemeni student at the University of Oregon. "If after today we can go back to our families and friends and tell them we could sit down and listen to each other, and they tell others about it, we can stop stereotypes and fear of each other."

At the end of the first day, participants in the colloquium requested a new seating arrangement; the Arab Fulbright students had been grouped on one side of the room, while American students sat on the other side.

"It made it easy to talk about 'us' versus 'them,'" Riham Bahi said, "and seemed to bring out more feelings of tension, when actually we found more to agree on than not. Tomorrow, we'll sit together - we're all students and that's why we're here."