Professor Allen Hibbard seems to always be in a rush these days. Between running MTSU’s Middle East Center and teaching courses in English, welcoming Fulbright scholars that have traveled across the world and showing them around Murfreesboro, Hibbard has plenty on his plate this fall semester.
Scholars have come from around the world to contribute to a new department at MTSU, traveling from places like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen, to settle - for at least a little while - in Murfreesboro.
The Middle East Center just celebrated the end of its inaugural year, a successful beginning that has attracted students and professors of diverse backgrounds in pursuit of one common goal: an understanding of an embattled area that begs for a fresh and conversant perspective.
In 2004, the idea for the center evolved during discussions between President Sydney McPhee, Vice President of Development Joe Bales and Representative Harold Ford, Jr.
“We were very fortunate to have administrators and outside help,” Hibbard says. “One of the things I discovered is that [the center] works successfully because it has had the support of the leadership of the university. They saw it as a legitimate social and cultural need.”
McPhee sought Ron Messier’s advice, a professor of Middle East history with extensive research and teaching experience in the field. Using other successful collegiate Middle East Centers as a model, a concrete plan was developed for MTSU to follow suit.
“One needn’t make an argument for the need for Middle Eastern studies today,” Hibbard says. “You could ask, ‘Why didn’t we start 10 years ago?’ Then, we would’ve known more as citizens, and perhaps been able to avoid some of the things that are going on right now politically. But a university should be in the business of providing students with opportunities to earn about other cultures and develop skills in language. That’s part of the mission of a good, comprehensive university.”
According to the Modern Language Association, enrollment in Arabic courses jumped 92 percent between 1998 and 2002. At the time, only 10 percent of U.S. colleges offered Arabic courses. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, and emerging battles in the Middle East seem to have pushed the percentages much higher.
"[Middle Eastern studies] have been made even more compelling given the nature of relationships that have developed between the United States and various cultures in the Middle East,” Hibbard says. “You read about it in the paper everyday; they affect our lives. You might know people fighting there or have lost people there, and yet, you might not even understand exactly the nature of their culture.”
Hibbard and his colleagues have seen several traveling scholars come and go within the center, including Younes Riyani, lecturer and doctoral candidate at Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan, Morocco, who returned to his homeland last month.
The Fulbright Scholar spent the past academic year at MTSU working on his doctoral dissertation. Specifically, Riyani is examined American impressions of Morocco between 1912 and 1956, the time of Spanish and French colonization.
“There is a chasm between the political society and the academic society,” Riyani told the MTSU Record. “So the academic society has the spirit to create an equal dialogue between cultures, between civilizations.”
Muhammad Masud traveled from Yarmouk University in Jordan to teach Arabic at MTSU in the Fall of 2006.
More recently, Khalid Al-Daoudi has crossed the cultural border from Oman - right outside of Saudi Arabia - to assistant teach courses in Arabic for the curriculum.
Plans are under way to bring Abdul Aziz Said, founder of American University’s Center for Global Peace, and Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to MTSU this fall in conjunction with conferences on diversity and the Holocaust.
In just one short year, the program has seen the approval of an interdisciplinary minor in Middle East studies, an introductory course in the subject, classes in first-year Arabic and Hebrew and a community outreach program aimed at middle and high-school teachers.
The Middle Easteern studies minor, encompassing classes in Arabic and Hebrew, history, literature and music, among others, has attracted students with varied career and personal aspirations.
“We have [students] wanting to go into the FBI, to help amend their studies in Mass Communications, as well as some heritage students,” Hibbard says. “And then we have students in the class who are purely just interested. It’s been interesting to see how students have come to the minor for various reasons.”
The center has been able to set-up headquarters this semester in room 104 of the Midgett Building.
A sign that reads “Shalom, ya’ll” greets interested students when they enter the office. Hibbard’s bookshelf is rife with novels discussing the plethora of issues in the Middle East. The other office in the center is empty, awaiting the arrival of new Arabic teacher Kari Neely from Michigan.
Al-Daoudi waits for Hibbard outside, freshly introduced to the United States and eager to experience what MTSU has to offer and, in return, to share a little bit of the culture from his homeland with its students.
“I’m very proud of the way in which we’ve worked with a group of people here from different disciplines - mass communication, engineering, foreign languages, English, economics,” Hibbard says. “I’ve been delighted to see the development of ties between these people, creating a new space within the university for those of us who have common interests to come together. I’m hoping this will become a second home for those with interest in the Middle East.”
