November 29, 2001 An audio conference session “Students Talking to Students” was held on November 28 between students from Birzeit University (BZU) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The session, which lasted over an hour, was held at Birzeit University's Media Resource Center in Ramallah. The idea of the conference was first conceived by Lennard Davis at UIC, and his wife, Bella Mirabella, a professor at New York University, after the tragic events of September 11 in the United States. The idea of it was to hold a dialogue between American students and their counterparts in the Middle East to learn more about each other. “Students Talking to Students” gave Palestinian students an opportunity to share their experience of the current closures, detentions and harassment and their effects on education, with an overseas audience. It also gave them the chance to gauge the level of knowledge of the current predicament whilst adding a firsthand perspective. Students asked their American counterparts how stereotypes and the role of the media informed their views of Palestine and Palestinians. In turn, the American students were keen to hear how the current situation had been affecting everyday life, and discussed the current conflict in Afghanistan and the American role in global politics. Raed El-Sharif, an MBA student at BZU and currently working at the Birzeit University Information Technology Unit, was among the students who participated in the event. For him, the session “was a valuable experience to know more about how American people think of us and the level of their knowledge about our situation. It was a good opportunity to correct part of their information about our suffering by giving them suitable facts and figures about the political, economical, and social situation here in Palestine.” “We have much to learn from the Palestinian students, and they have much to learn from us,” said Davis “We expect both sides to change preconceptions and come away with better understanding. Ultimately, that is what the university experience is about.” Davis plans to develop a template or a kit of the “Students Talking to Students” program to make it available to other universities. He would like to see this pilot program expanded to include future conferences and team-taught video courses, composed of both UIC and Birzeit University students. The session was scheduled to take place at the end of October, but due to the curfew imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on October 17 for three weeks, the session was postponed until the end of November. The students from Birzeit University were all chosen upon the recommendation of their professors, and included both undergraduate and graduate students, studying in different faculties at the University.
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