The tales are eye opening. Tear gas, birdshot and police brutality define vivid recollections of a revolutionary time, but this week brought a reminder that nothing has really changed. No, I [Alex] am not talking about the Civil Rights Movement and Ferguson, MO, but instead about the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring and his imminent release from jail after the charges against him for overseeing the deaths of 800 protesters were thrown out by a judge.
Being abroad has given me the opportunity to interact and talk with people who lived and shaped the events that we in the bubble only read about in the international section of the New York Times. Over the past few weeks, an Egyptian professor of mine has been slowly divulging his experiences of living in Tahrir Square, while venting his frustration with the current regime for releasing back into society those who supervised the violence he experienced.
My professor joined the protests after a canister of tear gas flew through the window of his classroom at the American University in Cairo. This, among other events caused the University’s administration to cancel classes and evacuate all non-Egyptian students and professors. Over the next two weeks he lived in the square, only returning home to shower, change his clothes and see his family.
During the course of the protests he documented the scenes he saw in over 13,000 photos, witnessed eight protesters die and was shot in seven places with bird pellet, one piece of which he refused to let the doctors remove so it could serve as a reminder of the crimes the regime had committed against its people.
My professor’s story is just one of many, and these stories aren’t a new phenomenon. Scholars and intellectuals have a long history of involvement in conflict but today, more than ever, academic institutions have become specific targets for attack. Universities, academics and students across the world, from Colombia to Pakistan, are being targeted by governments and militants for their desire to learn and engage with the global academy.
This singling out has led to a massive exodus of professors and students from conflict zones to refugee camps and areas where they are unable to continue their research and studies. The rise in academic refugees has largely been a product of the increasingly hostile stance towards scholarship taken by those fighting wars. Take Boko Haram, a militant group in Nigeria whose name means “western education is forbidden,” or ISIS, which has waged a campaign of destruction aimed at academic institutions across Syria and Iraq.
This is a problem not only for the students and teachers it directly affects, but also for the international academic community that has lost valuable participants in scholarly discourse to violent conflict.
So what can we inside the bubble do for those who have been forced to leave theirs?
For one, Bowdoin could consider hosting displaced academics from conflict zones around the world that have been unable to find institutions in their immediate regions. This precedent has existed since World War II, when American colleges and universities played a crucial role in helping scholars flee Nazi Europe.
Today, organizations such as the Institute for International Education continue this legacy by facilitating temporary placements for academic refugees at willing host institutions until domestic conditions in their home countries are conducive for their return.
Hosting academic refugees would not only help these professors who wish to continue their teaching and studies, but also help our campus.
Bowdoin is a pretty homogeneous place when it comes down to it, but there exists a yearning on campus to engage further afield. This desire ought to be met by the institution. In bringing professors to campus who may have experienced first-hand what we learn about in government, history and sociology classes or who have new insights on regional topics, we would broaden our perspectives as an institution.
This is not to say that our education today is lacking—our professors foster our abilities to think critically, write well and apply what we learn to a variety of situations. However, we do need more opportunities to humanize the issues that are all too often sensationalized in the media, through the thoughts and ideas of those grappling with the issues first hand.
These perspectives aren’t prevalent in the American academic and scholarly discourse or in our immediate community, and these international scholars could provide them. This proposal would clearly represent a financial burden to the College, but we believe that the benefits to the College, and such an immense contribution to the common good, would greatly outweigh any costs.
Our experiences, whether abroad or on campus, have convinced us both that there are many ways that Bowdoin students can begin to unravel the problems that our world faces. As global dynamics change, it has become clear that we must work more concertedly to engage with scholars and opinions from outside the West.
Besides building a knowledge-base to tackle relevant issues, it is necessary that we as students begin thinking critically about how we engage the world through the structure and content of our Bowdoin education.
Besides conventional intellectual engagement, it is important that we freely invite and explore the views of those whose experiences are truly immersed in the realities of our changing world. In other words, let’s ensure that Bowdoin graduates continue to feel at home in all lands, and confident that they have the key to the world’s library in their pockets for years and years to come.