Pardon my platitudes, but when a person asks me about my experience in Qatar I don’t know where to begin.
The weather? The women? The language?
I am an awful summarizer caught off guard, so I have taken to trying to describe the way I am now, how hard it is re-acclimating to an American’s ideas of individual liberty and secularism and sexuality – ideas I never gave up but lost track of over three months.
Listen. I lived, worked, breathed the dry, dusty air in Qatar last quarter for my journalism residency. You might not consider that remarkable, given all the places NU undergrads go. Let me put it differently. After 15 hours airtime and a connection through Frankfurt, the University picked me up from the airport in Doha. Northwestern University. In Qatar.
A campus in Qatar is a resource we are lucky to have. Right now it’s getting passed off as no more than an elaborate branding campaign, pushing NU’s name but not its students beyond borders.
Forgive me. I promised myself I would leave the globetrotter B.S. on the other side of O’Hare security. But to have been there and to be here now, and feel such a disconnect, I’m disappointed.
The Daily published an article Friday, an article it publishes every year, about the handful of students and faculty members who spent their spring breaks at the University’s Middle Eastern outpost founded in 2008. This year’s headline: “NU students visit Qatar campus to bridge divide.” Previous headlines include “Students ‘blown away’ by work done at Northwestern-Qatar” and “Students from NU-Q get a taste of Evanston campus.”
And a taste is all. One that is so meticulously planned and scheduled that it might not taste like anything. These visits are important introductions, but as stepping stones they are not moving forward. The country that Qatar Foundation served up to its Evanston guests the week after I left was not the same one I lived in. Hell. It even rained!
While I understand the University’s word of mouth strategy, I am bothered by the fact that a meager awareness campaign starving for publicity is all it can be bothered to do.
I don’t blame Doha. I have spoken with Richard Roth, Medill’s senior associate dean at NU-Q, and Everette Dennis, its dean and CEO. They want to do more.
It is not an issue of funding. Practically everything related to Qatar is bankrolled by the Qatar Foundation.
The issue is lack of interest here in Evanston. An interest in seeing some place for more than just a week-long dog and pony show of traditional Qatari culture and actually discovering some of the other 80 percent of the population. An interest in bringing back understanding that extends beyond photographs.
Unfortunately, it’s a circle. Because the University doesn’t promote an easy way for students to take a quarter studying at the Medill and Communication Qatar counterparts, or completing requirements at other Education City schools, students don’t have a spark of interest to work with. But until such an interest is fully articulated, the University will not step up, which is a shame.
Another year, six more student ambassadors and still only inches closer to bridging a seemingly endless chasm in understanding. So when will we be done getting one-week tastes of a place that is undoubtedly far away and foreign, but not alien? It’s 7,000 miles and eight time zones from Evanston to Education City, but it would be a mistake to characterize the two campuses as worlds apart.
Professors already travel between the campuses, and the NU-Q curriculum offers the same level of rigor and even more opportunity with registration easily available at neighboring branches of Texas A&M, Cornell, Georgetown, Virginia Commonwealth, Carnegie Mellon and University College London.
Look. If you study journalism, go and experience a media environment unlike any you have ever worked in. If you study film, go and use industry-leading equipment and studio facilities. If you study Arabic, go and be surrounded by opportunities to practice. Really, the same applies if you study Urdu. If you study engineering, go and help a Gulf state eager to wean itself off of fossil fuels. And if you study economics or finance, go and help His Highness Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani figure out how to spend the rest of his money. He has plenty of it.
Qatar is going to be huge
