Author Archives: Arab America

Faraz Khan is promoting his upcoming course at Rutgers University on Facebook. The ability to read and write Arabic is not a prerequisite for Introduction to the History and Practice of Arabic Calligraphy. “This course will take students on a historical journey through different time periods and lands where written Arabic flourished,” Khan says. “Students will be exposed to different forms of Arabic lettering to examine a majestic art form that flourished not only to beautify the Quran but elementary in architecture and home décor.”

Khan has been named the 2015 Arts Council of Princeton Anne Reeves artist-in-residence, and will be leading seven events in Princeton that demonstrate his unique and contemporary approach to Arabic calligraphy, beginning at Communiversity, where Khan will show participants how to write their names in Arabic on pendants to be displayed in Palmer Square.

Among the other events will be a discussion of The Canticle of the Birds, an illustrated manuscript of a Sufi text – the original is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – in which all the worlds’ birds have transcended from human souls.

On June 26, participants will be invited to the Princeton Public Library with old books that are no longer useful. Khan will paint Arabic calligraphy on them, words “pertaining to knowledge and wisdom,” he says. He will do this for eight hours as people observe.

In September, outside of Princeton University Art Museum, Khan will demonstrate Arabic calligraphy, words, stories and cartoons made with light. Using a slow shutter speed, Khan will project patterns of light on a screen. “The audience will see movement of light but the meaning will come true when it’s projected,” he says. “It will have a graffiti element, taking light and showcasing attention on surroundings, projecting an image based on cumulative random flashes of light that don’t have meaning to us until you sequence it together and it becomes a light story.”

In October, at the conclusion of his residency, Khan will have an exhibition at the Arts Council’s Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, The Making of a New Script. “I will be taking home décor items such as tables, chairs and curtains, adding a new style of calligraphy,” he says. “There will be a lot of painting, to give a new feel to generic items to give new meaning.” He wants to showcase the “uniqueness of the language and calligraphy style to beautify surroundings.”

Khan lived the first 14 years of his life in Pakistan, then moved with his family to New Jersey “to escape turmoil and instability. My parents came to seek a better education for their children,” he says.

He first learned Arabic calligraphy about five years ago – growing up in Pakistan, the language was Urdu, which uses Arabic letters. “But Arabic wasn’t my first language, I had to learn it. I studied styles of Arabic calligraphy, reading texts on architecture for my master’s degree. I wanted to understand what differentiates one style from another and wanted to help others see this.

“Once I jumped in I felt attached,” he continues. “So much can be done with script and artistic style. Traditionally, there were rules about ratios and proportions and the angle of pen.”

Kufic script, the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts, is linear and bold. It developed at the end of the 7th century in Kufa, Iraq, and until about the 11th century it was the main script used to copy Qurans.

Naskh script is a basic script, the first that most learn to read and write. “It’s very simple and elegant but legible,” says Khan. “Most non Arabs read the Quran in Naskh. People like to read the Quran in Arabic so children are taught Naskh because it is simpler in style and readability.”

Khan uses a combination a combination of scripts. “It’s a more modern approach. Most people write according to a standard style but now people are creating their own unique way. It’s about creating art. In the Arab region calligraphy is an art, not a craft. Buildings and monuments are decorated with scripts to beautify the sculpture, whether inside or outside.”

The tools of his trade are paint, glitter and glue. “Traditional tools were bamboo sticks cut at certain angle and dipped into black india ink. The pen holds ink for only a few words until you have to dip again.” Khan’s artwork is bigger so he uses uses graffiti markers and brushes. For light writing, his light source is often a cell phone.

Khan likes using calligraphy to build a bigger picture. He recently made an outline of the Paul Robeson Center, the Arts Council building, and instead of painting with different colors, he wrote calligraphy in it. “It looks like painting but if you look closer you see calligraphy in colors,” he says.

“American Muslim education has focused on medical, legal and engineering, but art appreciation is often neglected, cutting off American Muslims from their heritage,” Khan continues. “They wouldn’t dare to touch a bamboo stick to make art — it hit me on a deeper level, our community wasn’t creating art, creating something beautiful and sharing with others. I felt it was a duty for me, to create and share art that is living, not just mimicking masters — many just copy standard styles — but I add to it.”

For his exhibition, Khan is creating a new script he calls Princetoni. “Different regions have their own scripts, and I’m continuing that legacy. It’s something to be proud of, shared, learned and admired.”

Faraz Khan, Arts Council of Princeton Anne Reeves Artist-in-Residence 2015 will begin his seven events with a community calligraphy-based art project for Communiversity, April 26, 1-6 p.m., Palmer Square Green.

Source: www.newsworks.org

Surf tourism has grown in popularity over the years, and Morocco’s little village of Taghazout, north of Agadir, has not escaped this trend. With its beautiful coast and picturesque setting, it is understandable that it has become temporary home to traveling surfers and yoga practitioners alike. But there’s another segment of this tourist business that is worth a more in-depth look – the entrepreneurs.

Speaking to our core values

Entrepreneurs are increasingly finding value in a change in setting. If it could be a coffee shop, a coworking space, a friend’s couch – so why not a whole different continent?

Entrepreneurship comes come in many forms and initiatives, and for Wamda’s French editor, Aline Mayard, it came as the Blue House project, which she launched in Taghazout over the last couple of months. We hold entrepreneurship at the very core of Wamda’s mission – a number of our team members are founders themselves – and working closely with entrepreneurs in this ecosystem can get really, really inspiring. So when Aline shared what she had been working on with us, we were all psyched.

Fishing for the right spot

Aline first heard about Taghazout while talking to the founders of UK-based Maptia, and Moroccan-American collaboration Chui, who had visited the town to enjoy its sandy shores, surf, and focus on work. When she heard that they had all ended up extending their stay, she became curious.

Source: www.wamda.com

U.S. lawmakers are quietly advancing legislation that would penalize international participation in the growing movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel for human rights abuses against Palestinians.

With little notice, anti-BDS directives were injected into the “Fast Track” legislation that passed the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday night, despite broad opposition to the bill, which gives the administration of President Barack Obama authority to ram though so-called “free trade” deals.

An amendment, included in the bill and sponsored by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), stipulates that, as a principle of trade negotiations, the U.S. should put pressure on other countries not to engage in BDS against Israel of any kind, including refusal to do business with settlements.

The passed amendment has not yet been made public, but Josh Ruebner, policy director for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, told Common Dreams that Cardin’s office confirmed that the language was based on the Senate legislation S.619, which states:

To include among the principal trade negotiating objectives of the United States regarding commercial partnerships trade negotiating objectives with respect to discouraging activity that discourages, penalizes, or otherwise limits commercial relations with Israel, and for other purposes.

“They tried to sneak it through,” said Ruebner, explaining that the Campaign only found out about the legislation late Monday afternoon through “happenstance.”

According to Ruebner, the legislation is a “centerpiece” of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) policy agenda and likely targets the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, currently under negotiation between the United States and European Union, which would also be affected by Fast Track legislation.

“This is putting pressure on the U.S. Trade Representative and whoever else is doing the negotiating to discourage attempts to enforce the European Union’s guidelines of not doing business with Israeli settlements,” he said.

This federal push is not only taking place in the Senate.

A similar piece of legislation was submitted last month to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. The United States-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act (H.R. 825) would require the U.S., in trade agreements, to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel and to seek the elimination of politically motivated non-tariff barriers on Israeli commerce.”

The potential implications of such legislation extend far beyond the ongoing negotiations with the EU, as its language refers to all trade agreements.

Furthermore, it appears to be part of a nation-wide strategy to pass legislation at the state and federal level to criminalize the call for BDS, which emerged from Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005 in a bid to win self-determination and freedom from occupation, using tactics similar to those levied to transform apartheid South Africa.

The U.S.-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace released a statement on Thursday condemning the advance of the legislation in the Senate: “From South Africa to the grape boycott to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) tactics have been essential tools used to create a more just society.”

But some say that the legislative push at the national level may, in fact, be an indication of the growing power of BDS movements.

Rabbi Joseph Berman, federal policy organizer for JVP, declared, “This legislation, which actually encourages illegal settlement building while strengthening the far right in Israel, shows that BDS is an increasingly powerful means to challenge Israel’s impunity when it comes to Palestinian rights.”

Source: www.commondreams.org

DONALD MACINTYRE The Independent The great Studs terkel, who pretty well invented modern oral history in the last century, wrote: “What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognises that you respect them because you’re listening. [So] they feel good about talking to you.” It’s in Terkel’s spirit that Cate Malek and Mateo … Continued

Dear Mr. Salloum: I have been reading and enjoying your delicious recipes in COUNTRYSIDE For many years now. My wife and I look forward to creating your recipes and exploring Middle Eastern cuisine every month. I have one question, are there any recipes involving the creation of spice blends. We enjoy using spices in our … Continued

t’s important to look at Palestinians holistically, and not just as people who live in a war zone,” Zeina Azzam tells me. “You need to humanize this group of people in American society because, often, they’re very much stereotyped.”

Zeina Azzam is the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund. (Chet Susslin)As a Palestinian largely raised in the United States, Azzam should know. “In America, we hear about Palestinians as pawns in this big political mess,” she says. At the Jerusalem Fund, where Azzam became executive director last month, “we just want to show them as human beings, to show they have hopes and dreams and jobs and kids.”

Before joining the Washington-based nonprofit, Azzam, 59, spent three decades working to educate people about the Mideast, and her new job offers her the opportunity to expand on those efforts. Since it was founded in 1977, the Jerusalem Fund has run three distinct programs: the Palestine Center, which seeks to educate through lecture series, policy briefings, and conferences; the Humanitarian Link, which gives money to hospitals, orphanages, and schools; and the Gallery, which seeks to showcase the rich cultural heritage of the Palestinian people through exhibits running every five to six weeks.

For Azzam, the work is acutely personal. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who fled to Syria in 1948 to escape the Arab-Israeli war. “Just like so many other Palestinian families, they took their key with them and just a few things, thinking they would be back after the war was over,” Azzam says. “When they didn’t come back, they lost everything.” Azzam herself was born in Syria, but when she was still a baby, her family moved to Beirut and then, when she was 10, to the United States. She spent her teen years in Delmar, a suburb outside of Albany, New York.

Life in the States was easier, but still not easy. “I grew up with this tension: Who am I really?” she says. When Azzam was in college at Vassar, where she majored in psychology (and minored in music), she learned it was possible to bridge the cultural gap. “I definitely stuck out in many ways,” she recalls, “but once people got to know me, they realized I’m just like them.” That revelation would help inform her work for decades to come.

Azzam first came to Washington in 1980, where she took a job as assistant director of educational outreach at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Eight years later, she left to have a second child and get a master’s degree in sociology at George Mason University. She returned to Georgetown in 1994 to do educational outreach about the Arab world with a program she had created and to earn a second master’s, in Arabic literature. (Azzam is also a published poet.) In 2014, she worked briefly as a senior program manager of the Arabic Language and Culture program at Qatar Foundation International before landing her current position.

While Americans have definitely expanded their narrow view of Arab culture, there’s still a lot of work to do, she says. September 11, for instance, “really set us back in terms of stereotypes about violence and terrorism.” Eventually, Azzam says, progress was made, “and then this whole phenomenon of ISIS appeared, and all of a sudden the extremist Muslim stereotype is back and we have to fight it all over again.” Even so, she says, things have come a long way since she arrived in the United States. “When I first came here, I’d say I’m from Palestine and I’d get, ‘Oh, Pakistan!’ ” she recalls. “At least now we’re on the map.”

Source: www.nationaljournal.com

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Friday warned that the international community must do everything possible to prevent a further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East before it becomes irreversible.

“The situation in the Middle East is a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing. If things continue this way, we could see future developments spin out of control, independently of our will and with increasingly dangerous global consequences,” he warned in an address in New York to the UN Security Council.

Source: www.unhcr.org

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is expected to meet U.S. Vice President Joe Biden Friday on the fourth day of his visit to the U.S., where he is holding a series of meetings with American officials to garner support for Lebanon.

Hariri’s several-day trip, which began Tuesday, comes at a time when Lebanon struggles to shield itself from the regional turmoil, particularly the repercussions of a four-year civil war in neighboring Syria.

The Future Movement leader Thursday met separately with Congresswoman Kay Granger and Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. The former prime minister’s office issued no statement on the two meetings.

Late Wednesday, Hariri urged Washington to act quickly to help Lebanon ease the burden of the Syrian refugee crisis on the country.

“The issue of the Syrian refugees can cause big problems in the absence of a quick solution to the Syrian crisis, which should be a concern of the U.S. administration and a top priority in order to avoid repercussions and severe damage to Lebanon and the region,” Hariri said during a meeting at the Capitol with members of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.

The meeting focused on the situation in Lebanon and the Middle East region, a statement from Hariri’s office said Thursday.

It said Hariri also met with the House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator John McCain, Representative Mike Pompeo and Representative Ed Royce.

“During the meeting, members of the committee asked [Hariri] a number of questions about the aspects of the Iranian interference in the Arab countries and their negative impact on the situation in the region in general,” the statement said.

Hariri’s visit, according to the statement, is “related to providing elements of protection for Lebanon from the regional repercussions.”

“The meeting tackled the importance of the support that the United States could offer to the Lebanese Army,” it added.

The statement said the committee praised the role that Hariri and his late father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, played in establishing the rules of democracy in Lebanon and maintaining the values of coexistence between the Lebanese.

Hariri also discussed “the various topics of interest to Lebanon at this stage” with House Majority Leader McCarthy, Senator McCain and Representative Pompeo.

Last week, Hariri paid a visit to Doha during which he held talks with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on the latest developments in the region, especially the Saudi-led airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

In March, the head of the Future Movement held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on visits aimed at reaffirming support for moderation in the face of Islamist extremism roiling the Middle East.

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

n April 23, a group consisting of hundreds of Jewish and Arab Israelis will gather for the 12th consecutive year under the auspices of the nonprofit association Together Beyond Words to commemorate Nakba Day, Independence Day and Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers (which actually falls on April 22). This year, they will gather in the joint Jewish-Arab community of Neveh Shalom to “mark and respect the pain and loss on both sides and facilitate shared independence,” as the organizers said.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

My 1woman this month is one of the ‘Most powerful Arab women’ according to Forbes! she marks her own path,  doesn’t really “play” and doesn’t tend to do “social” without a cause, she will even clear cut not respond to some snoopy questions I might have! but underneath this determined temperament is a humble , loyal , protective mother that is substantially committed to her values and although she feels that she hasn’t done anything worthwhile (except raising her children) she has achieved more than anyone could in a lifetime.

Thus without further ado, get to know this extraordinary woman with many hats :Mary Nazzal-Batayneh

Bio

Mary Nazzal-Batayneh is deputy chairperson of Landmark hotel Amman, after taking over ownership of the property from her hotelier father, Yousef Nazzal, in 2009. Nazzal-Batayneh then canceled the hotel’s management contracts with Radisson SAS and founded the first (and only) Jordanian owned and run five-star hotel in the Kingdom with her husband Aysar Batayneh, whom she affectionately calls her rock and ‘The best idea she ever had’.

Taking the hospitality sector by storm, she breathes new life into an industry her grandfather once pioneered. (I know where I am staying in my next visit to Amman )

In addition, Mary is a barrister specialised in international human rights law with a particular emphasis on Palestinian legal rights. She is a member of the Bar of England and Wales.Her academic background includes a BA in political science from Columbia University in New York; a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the College of Law in London and the Bar Vocational Course at Inns of Court School of Law.

She is the co-founder and Chair of the Palestine Legal Aid Fund (PLAF), which is non-profit entity was designed to facilitate strategic legal action on behalf of Palestinian victims of human right abuse and to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law. PLAF was responsible for the planning and execution of several civil and criminal cases across a variety of jurisdictions including England and Spain.

In 2013 , She was the only Jordanian selected as a Young Global Leader (part of the World Economic Forum) who are chosen based on their commitment of their time and talent towards making the world a better place. And in 2014, she was chosen as a cover story for Forbes magazine and  one of “Forbes’ 200 Most Powerful Arab Women”. She is also a devoted mother of 3 young children.

1w: What woman inspires you and why?

MNB: My mother of course – she is self-made, real and totally devoted.

My daughter, although she is tiny, is also an inspiration because she is a true star – she is happy, fun and kind.

Also recently, I’ve been working with a small group of women who are the founders of the boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) movement in Jordan. They are intelligent, motivated, and dedicated to an important cause.

1w:How were you as a child?

MNB: I think I came across as quite mature for my age. I went to a Catholic Convent for primary school which I suppose played a role in shaping me to take responsibility at an early age. I had a very exciting imagination too and played a lot alone in the outdoors.

1w: What type of people do you normally gravitate towards? What influence do they have on your life/business?

MNB: I tend to connect with extroverts and passionate people. I suppose we energise and feed off each other. But overall I can’t say that I get influenced easily, I seem to mark my own path.

Source: onewomanmanyhats.com

Consumer advocate and former presidential hopeful Ralph Nader has collected more than 100 letters he sent to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama over 15 years for a new book titled Return to Sender. In the book, Nader writes that he had hoped the lost art of letter-writing might have helped in “inaugurating a new tradition of presidential replies [to] enrich deliberative democracy.”

Unfortunately, as the title suggests, the correspondence was almost entirely one-sided. “With very few exceptions,” he writes, “I received no response from anyone on staff, nor even an acknowledgement of receipt.”

The Washington Post highlighted many excerpts from the book, which range from incredibly perceptive and pointed analysis of policy issues, to bizarre role-playing exercises and downright rude characterizations of the very people he is messaging. The whole thing seems so perfectly Nader — or at least the public’s perception of Nader. It’s easy to imagine him alone, hunched over a desk or cup of coffee at a diner, writing out hundreds of pieces of correspondence that basically amount to one long conversation with himself, silently uttering under his breath “ooh, you got him good with that one, Ralph,” whenever he crafts a real choice zinger. Maybe a little bewildered and chagrined but never dejected by the fact that, no matter how intelligent or increasingly weird his soliloquies become, nobody seems to be paying attention.

Here are some of the more brusque examples.

Dear President Bush,

You have been a weak president, despite your strutting and barking, when it comes to doing the right things for the American people within the Constitution and its rule of law. This trait is now in bold relief over the Israeli government’s escalating war crimes pulverizing the defenseless people and country of Lebanon.

— July 17, 2006

Dear President Obama,

Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii know, watching you race up and down the basketball court, how prescient they were when they nicknamed you “Barry O’Bomber.”

Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of powers at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime.

— Sept. 6, 2013

Frustrated with Bush’s handling of FEMA trailers in Hope, Arkansas, after Hurricane Katrina, Nader imagines a dialogue between former President Clinton and G.W. in a letter addressed to the latter:

GWB: Hey Bill, how about you and me hopping on Air Force One pronto and heading down to your old stomping grounds around Hope. Let’s show we can break up that bureaucratic logjam and leave Hope with 10,000 fewer trailers. I’m the president, you were the president. You were the Governor of Arkansas. Hometown boy comes home to do good. What a great photo opportunity for bipartisanship?

WJC: Not a bad idea, George. But the bureaucracy starts in Washington, D.C., so there will have to be some bureaucracy-busting advance work done to make the visit a success. Then there is the matter of getting floodplain rules waived and all the other state and local rules which Washington has not confronted for months.

GWB: Hmm, Bill, you’ve been doing your homework.

WJC: Not really, George, just reading the newspapers.

GWB: OK, OK, I get the snide remark. But I’ve been running a war for freedom. . . . ”

— March 3, 2006

In a decidedly weirder bit of role-playing, Nader writes from the perspective of E. coli bacteria, concluding with a great bit of rhyming (who knew bacteria were poetic?):

Dear President Obama,

My name is E.coli O104:H4. I am being detained in a German laboratory in Bavaria, charged with being “a highly virulent strain of bacteria.” . . . I cannot help but harm innocent humans, and I am very sad about this. I want to redeem myself, so I am sending this life-saving message straight from my Petri dish to you. . . .

Your associates are obsessed with possible bacteriological warfare by your human enemies. Yet you are hardly doing anything on the ongoing silent violence of my indiscriminate brethren.

You and your predecessor George W. Bush made many speeches about fighting terrorism by humans. Have you made a major speech about us? . . .

You may wonder how tiny bacterial me, probably not even harboring a virus, can send you such a letter. . . . Whatever the how does it really matter to the need to act now?

E-cologically yours,

E.coli O104:H4 (for now)

— June 3, 2011

And finally, growing increasingly salty that his letters have received no response, he begins to sound like, well, like one of those guys who writes letters:

In previous correspondence I have taken note of the remarkably consistent practice by the White House of neither responding (whether by you or your staff) to substantive letters on pending or proposed public policies nor even providing the courtesy of acknowledging receipt. in 2009, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Mike Kelleher, who was in charge of handling letters to the president. He recognized that you did not have any policy about when and if you or the White House staff would respond or even acknowledge the receipt of substantive letters. He said that he would get back to me were such a policy established. He never did.

Source: www.deathandtaxesmag.com

One of the biggest decisions parents will help their children make is choosing a university. For families in the Arab region, this can mean sending a child across the border to another country in the Middle East or North Africa.

Parents who have made that choice cite academic options, costs and career opportunities among the reasons they sent their children overseas. Here are four things for families to consider when exploring higher education options in another Arab region country.

1. Explore curriculums and communities tied to one’s home country: After finishing high school in Syria, Nawaar Abu Zeid daydreamed about becoming a lawyer but wasn’t admitted to Damascus University. Abu Zeid’s father, Ibrahim, thoroughly researched universities in the region and encouraged Abu Zeid to enroll in Ain Shams University in Egypt. 

“I couldn’t afford a private university in Lebanon or Jordan. Ain Shams has a good reputation for teaching law, many Syrian professors have graduated from Cairo-based colleges and Egyptian civil law is similar to Syrian. A degree from Egypt will prepare my son to become a practicing lawyer in Syria,” says Ibrahim.

“Law professors in Damascus advised to pursue Egyptian universities, where Arabic is the language of instruction and Syrian transcripts are accepted. Egyptian law curricula is similar to Syrian – Syrian and Egyptian civil laws originate from French law,” he says.

[See how Arab universities are preparing students for law careers.]

For Ibrahim, there were many other positives to his son attending Ain Shams University. Living expenses in Egypt are relatively affordable, for example, and many Syrians who fled war settled in Egypt.

The Syrian community has a Facebook page called Khatwa – Arabic for “a step” – aimed at advising Syrian students about choosing and registering for a university in Egypt.

2. Seek a multicultural environment: For Wafaa, an Algerian student who preferred only to give her first name, convincing her parents to allow her to leave home to study in Lebanon was quite difficult. Yet, she was persistent, asked family members to mediate and went to study in Beirut. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Beirut Arab University.

“I liked the open-minded culture in Beirut, that makes me better understand other cultures and advances my career,” she says. Studying in Arabic made it easy for her, and the experience of living abroad made her more independent, self-motivated and hardworking, Wafaa says.

[See which schools topped the 2015 Best Arab Region Universities rankings.]

It is common for public university professors in Algeria to take higher-paying second jobs teaching at private universities and therefore be less committed to the public university position. In contrast, Wafaa notes, “At the BAU, professors, mostly Egyptians, are distinguished, committed to lectures and active in their careers.” For her, having committed professors was a huge draw to going to school outside of Algeria.

“Lebanon is very diverse. I had colleagues from Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, even from Iran. In my class there were Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Muslims,” says Wafaa, who identifies herself as a Sunni Muslim. That diversity expanded her horizons to new cultures and religions and helped her understand politics in different countries.

Wafaa is now three months away from completing her doctoral studies at the University of Algiers, and her parents’ opinion of her choices has changed. “They are proud of me as the only one in the family to be in academia,” Wafaa says.

3. Research universities in countries with booming economies and job opportunities: After graduating from law school in Egypt in the 1980s, Egyptian citizen Mohamed Said worked in a low-paying job. Today, he is encouraging his son to study in the United Arab Emirates to avoid facing a similar challenge. Educational institutions in the UAE enjoy close relationships with the booming business sectors and he is likelier to find a well-paying job as a result.

Source: www.usnews.com