SFS-Q: A Cultural Crossroads

More than 6,000 miles from the District, 30 professors and 203 students are working to bring a slice of Georgetown to Doha, Qatar.

The Qatar campus, a 6-year-old offshoot of the School of Foreign Service, promotes itself as providing the classic Georgetown education to students in the Middle East. SFS-Q students take "Map of the Modern World" and "Problem of God." They host a Model United Nations conference every year.

But the school also aspires to imbue students with something more abstract.

"[We] want to live by the Georgetown values more broadly, from cura personalis to being the best one can for others and to do this in a way that demonstrates Georgetown is for those of all faiths and none," SFS-Q Dean Gerd Nonneman wrote in an email. "SFS-Q in this sense is an extension … of SFS and of the wider Georgetown community."

In order to achieve this, professors and administrators must tread a fine line between emphasizing Georgetown's ideals and preaching Western morals.  

"It is not the university's job to ‘promote' democratic values in a political sense, or indeed to promote any particular political system," Nonneman wrote. "Our aim is to produce graduates who think for themselves, not ones that should have a particular view of international politics."

Lately, the spotlight at SFS-Q has been on the Arab Spring protests that erupted across the region last year.

Wadah Al Shugaa (GRD '13), a Yemeni-born student who studied abroad in Qatar last calendar year, said that dialogue on campus started to change in the wake of the protests.   

"Most events on campus addressed the … Arab Spring. Georgetown brought in regional experts to speak about the changing political situation and the role of social media," Al Shugaa said. "I tried to take a lot of classes Qataris take so I could hear their thoughts."

According to Nonneman, the diversity of the campus — SFS-Q's roughly 200 students represent 53 nationalities — helps to further this goal of provoking intellectual debate. Only one-third of the students are natives of Qatar, while the rest are U.S. expats and foreign students.

"There is a more diverse student body here, with vociferous expression of ideas from a wide range of national backgrounds, often questioning what in the West might be [generally accepted] wisdom, and thus very much enriching the debate," Nonneman wrote.

Al Shugaa agreed.

"They bring speakers to the Qatar campus who challenge students to think in the hopes of making students aware of multiple perspectives," he said. "There is no particular emphasis on Western or democratic values. It's much more nuanced than that."

Instead, the school promotes an appreciation for social justice.   

"There is a tangible effort to sensitize the student population at SFS-Q toward issues of equity and rights in Qatari society," said Samuel Biesiada (MSB '12), who studied abroad at the campus last semester.

For Samantha Smith, a student from the Naval Academy who attended SFS-Q last spring, the opportunity to interact with Qatari students was the defining aspect of her experience abroad.

"SFS-Q was an opportunity that I'll probably never have again and one that I'll always treasure. I learned so much just from talking and listening to people. We talked about politics, religion, military issues, family life," she wrote in an email.

The Qatar campus also hosts a volunteer program that connects students with the burgeoning migrant community. According to Al Shugaa, the volunteers teach the migrants English and how to use the Internet.

Many of the poorest migrants, who come mainly from India, Nepal and Pakistan, are unskilled workers. As Qatar prepares to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, it has faced increasing criticism for its treatment of migrant laborers in the construction sector.

"The Georgetown administration has been highly supportive of students interested in addressing labor migration issues," Al Shugaa said. "Both professors and students are involved in leading workshops that teach computer skills."

According to Biesiada, the research on these issues conducted by SFS-Q students plays a role in local politics.  

"[The research is] looked at by policy makers, who can implement policy changes rather easily, as they don't have to worry about re-election," he added, referencing Qatar's hereditary monarchy.

For Al Shugaa, the political and cultural differences he was exposed to in Qatar have allowed him to view the culture and politics of the United States in a different light.  

"As an Arab, I personally think that the SFS-Q offers other Arabs the opportunity to … understand America in a balanced perspective, which ties back to the Jesuit ideal of offering a curriculum that addresses the whole perspective," he said.