“Faculty, students adjusting to ongoing protests in Egypt” |
| Faculty, students adjusting to ongoing protests in Egypt Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:40 PM PST Current protests in Egypt were the topic of a forum held by the Jackson School of International Studies last week, and recently have been part of the curriculum of some UW professors. "I felt it was important enough, traumatic enough to justify talking in class about it," David Bachman, a professor in the Jackson School, said. Many students and faculty attended the forum held last Friday in the Walker Ames room of Kane Hall to discuss and hear about the protests in Egypt, in which millions have rose up and called for an end to the current president's regime, which many feel is corrupt. Compared with the size of a previous panel discussion on Jan. 27 about Tunisia, which is still undergoing an uprising that began in December 2010, John Compton, a graduate student in Middle East studies, called the event "huge." "What you saw here today was indicative of [the current attention on Egypt]," Compton said about the event. "If you run into anybody who has anything to do with Middle East studies, they're really distracted." This Monday, Bachman and Clark Lombardi, associate professor of law and panel speaker for Friday's discussion, both held special lectures to address the events in Egypt during normal lecture hours. Bachman, who noticed that many of his students attended last Friday's forum, took an entire lecture to discuss and relate the events in Egypt to his International Studies 201 course. Similarly, Lombardi, who specializes in Islamic law and constitutional law, held a special lecture because he felt it was important to address student curiosity. However, some students felt that the university should be doing more to facilitate discussions about the events unfolding in Egypt. Two undergraduate students who stuck around after the event to have discussions of their own, Aaron Lerner and Andrew Girgis, said they expect the university to prepare students to properly consume current events of historical value. "They should provide you with tools that are unbiased to receive what's happening in Egypt," Lerner said. Though some UW faculty members are presenting information about the situation to their classes, Marwa Maziad, a student in the Near and Middle Eastern studies Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program who also spoke as part of the panel, believes students also need to learn how to watch the news on their own. "What students need to do is diversify their sources and sort out the different narratives circulating," Maziad said. "This is a struggle of values that are akin with the values of freedom, values of building your nation and country, rather than a threat that will come and terrorize us." Though there are concerns from students about how the information will be presented to them, Resat Kasaba, director of the Jackson School, said the events in Egypt could change how professors approach the Middle East in the future. "In the Arab Middle East, this is really new in the sense that these regimes that have been in existence for three or four decades are now being threatened by popular movements," Kasaba said. "So that's a new issue that will be dealt with and have an important role in how we teach these places." Reach contributing writer Stephen Lee at development@dailyuw.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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