“Have you filled your car up with gas?” asked Dr. Donald Kerchis on Monday evening to the packed auditorium in Spotts. “Most of our gas comes from those countries.” Those countries that Dr. Kerchis was talking about are the Middle Eastern and North African ones that have been the focus of international attention for months.
Dr. Kerchis was answering a question that asked how the events halfway around the world could affect someone here at Slippery Rock. The panel, “Understanding the Middle East Uprising,” hosted by the SRU Middle East Studies Center, was held for the purpose of helping SRU students understand what is happening, why and how it affects them.
“Gas has risen 78 cents in the past few months,” said Dr. Abbas Noorbakhsh of the School of Business, something that anyone who’s been to Sheetz lately can confirm.
The panel consisted of professors from many different departments of the university. They each offered a different view on the events taking place in the Middle East. The members of the panel were Dr. Eric Tuten, Dr. Abbas Noorbakhsh, Dr. Ahmad Khalili, Dr. Donald Kerchis and Mr. Faris Al-Ahmad.
Dr. Eric Tuten of the History Department began the evening by giving a brief overview of the history and geography of the Middle Eastern and North African countries that have become the center of international focus.
Dr. Abbas Noorbakhsh of the School of Business and Ahmed Khalili of the Department of Professional Studies discussed the factors that led to these revolutions. In the past 30 years, the Middle East’s economy has grown extremely fast. However, this growth was mismanaged and the new wealth was unevenly distributed.
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have had a large part in these revolutions. Mr. Faris Al-Ahmad of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures pulled up his Facebook account on the projector. The page he had displayed was titled “The Syrian Revolution 2011.” It was the only thing on the page that wasn’t in Arabic.
A majority of these Facebook pages dedicated to the uprisings are in Arabic. However, there are many slowly growing English sites.
Some of these pages have some very graphic pictures and videos, but these posts are what are coming out of the countries. They are uploaded to Facebook so that journalists around the world can access them.
“Although the pages are in Arabic, you can still post in English on them. The people speak English and will reply to you. That’s a great way to learn about what is going on over there,” said Faris. Facebook is where so much of this is happening. It is one of the most current sources, but cannot always be completely trustworthy.
There have been attacks against the Facebook pages, hackers trying to take the page down or mislead people. The defense is to create more pages. With many pages dedicated to the cause it would be impossible for hackers to take down all of them.
The panel moderator, Dr. Andrew Colvin, an assistant professor of philosophy, was pleased with the turnout at the panel.
His intention for this panel was to help SRU students to get a clear picture of what is happening in the Middle East.
“There is so much information in the news about what is happening, but so much of it is incomplete. It’s mostly misinformation or sound bytes without much context,” Colvin said.
He encourages students to seek out information on their own, not just the first thing they find on their Google home page, and to read in-depth reports of what is happening. He suggested the New York Times, but strongly discouraged Fox News. He felt that some of Fox’s views might not accurately portray what is happening in the Middle East.
Tuten suggested much the same thing. He hopes that the Middle East studies programs will grow over time. However, there are few classes that are offered in the field. Tuten, himself, teaches one called “Contemporary Middle East,” but that is the only class offered at the undergraduate level.
The message of the evening was this: stay informed. Stay in tune with what is happening around the world because its effects are not isolated to those few countries, but are, in fact, global.
