Jomana Shdefat, left, with Salah Khalil, a philanthropist who works in the Arab world.
The following is a guest post by Jomana Shdefat, of Al al-Bayt University, in Jordan. Ms. Shdefat recently attended her first international higher-education conference, in Denmark.
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A girl born into a Bedouin tribe in the Jordanian desert does not start life with her family expecting her to earn a Ph.D. My loving but traditional parents raised me to be a good girl so that I would someday be a good wife and a good mother. That was all they knew to do with a girl.
Thirty-three years later, I am still in the desert, but to the consternation of my family and tribe, I am neither a wife nor a mother. I am a Ph.D. and an assistant professor of education at Al al-Bayt University, in Jordan.
I live in the middle of the Middle East. The name of my town, Mafraq, even means middle. My district borders Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. My family’s house is on the highway to Baghdad. We have sand, sheep, olive trees, camels, and concrete buildings that look as though they’ve popped straight out of the sand.
Until this month, when I attended the annual meeting of the European Association for International Education, in Copenhagen, I had never been out of the Middle East. With more than 4,000 attendees, the conference was the largest event I had ever been to. As near as I could tell, I was the only woman there with a hijab, or headscarf.
Imagine what Copenhagen looked like to a woman born and raised in the desert: green, trains, bicycles, rain, color, traffic lights, boats, cool, water … freedom. Everything reminded me of the magical feelings I had as a child when I first saw images of Europe on television and in the movies.
Mafraq has one traffic light. The hundreds of traffic lights in Copenhagen organize not only cars but also pedestrians, bicycles, the physically handicapped, and even, with audio signals, people who can’t see well. Everywhere in Copenhagen, on park benches and in cafes, you see people sitting and reading books. Some of the trains even have special quiet cars where it is easier for people to read. It’s extremely rare to see someone reading in public in Jordan.
When I was invited to be on the panel for one of the EAIE sessions, which asked, “What does the unrest in the Arab world mean for higher education?,” I wasn’t sure how much I could contribute.
I got “Arab Spring” in my heart more than a decade ago, when I decided that, instead of rushing into marriage and children, I wanted a Ph.D. My father helped me do that, but he also found me a husband, just in case I changed my mind. The arranged marriage was a disaster that lasted only a few months. Amazingly, my father supported me when I said I wanted out of the marriage, but the divorce is still the talk of the university. Women who are not subservient wives are not held in high esteem, Ph.D. or no Ph.D.
My Arab uprising is not so much collective as it is personal. Is this a story anybody wants to hear?
At the conference, in sessions, receptions, and the exhibition hall, I especially enjoyed my interactions with women. The women my age in Jordan can be petty and gossipy. Rarely do they take an interest in intellectual matters. All of the women at the conference seemed interested in my story and my efforts to make things better for the girls who will come after me. The story of my failed marriage and the difficulties I now face because I am no longer a virgin seemed to amaze everyone. In Jordan, I get no sympathy or support, so I never tell the story. It was liberating to feel that I could completely be myself with others.
The men were less personal, but I believe it was because they didn’t quite know how to react to my hijab. They were all being respectful and deferential, but I would have preferred a little more interaction.
I used an online “agenda builder” for the conference to set up meetings with people ahead of time. I went from thinking that I would spend a lot of time in sessions to realizing that the best way I could use my time was by making contacts with people who wanted to partner with my university.
Before I went to Copenhagen, Al al-Bayt University had no partnerships with any university anywhere in the world. At the conference, universities on every continent expressed an interest in my institution.
Once I realized the level of interest, I spent nearly all of my time trying to make such connections. I was so unprepared for this to happen that I hadn’t even brought any of my business cards. They are all in Arabic, but it never occurred to me to bring them anyway.
So I wound up spending the bulk of my time at the conference going from booth to booth telling my university’s story. Most booths offered free food, candy, T-shirts, pens, and the most impressive brochures I have ever seen. What a budget for marketing! I want to create a center at my university that will look and function something like the conference booths. I’d like to decorate my center with posters and materials from all of the universities that would like to partner with us. And I would like to build a group of students who, after studying abroad, would volunteer their time to staff the center and tell other students how they can study internationally.
From Copenhagen and the conference, I have taken back experiences and contacts that have the potential to transform my little desert university. I have contracts in hand from universities in France, Italy, and the United States who want to partner with Al al-Bayt for teaching and student exchanges. Many more suggested that I contact them upon my return, so that I can make similar arrangements. I am sorting through those contacts now and planning follow-up proposals.
Although it is a modest institution, Al al-Bayt has good programs in many fields. Our astronomy department is good in part because the night sky in the middle of the desert is amazingly clear. We have good programs in nursing and architecture as well. I would especially like to arrange for students who are interested in comparative religion to get an introduction to Islam with me in the Higher Institute of Islamic Studies.
Al al-Bayt was established for the purpose of deepening, in Islam, the values of freedom of thought and expression. I think a student or professor from anywhere in the world who wanted to study Arabic, Islam, and authentic Middle Eastern culture could get a lot out of an extended visit to my university.
In addition, Scott Wilson and I recently made a visit to the Peace Corps office in Amman, where we discussed the possibility of getting support for a study-abroad center. If I can arrange for our students, especially the girls, to have opportunities to study abroad for a summer, a semester, or a year, our university will experience an intellectual uprising that will forever make it more competitive in the global market of ideas.
Editor’s note: Ms. Shdefat was the subject of a blog by David L. Wheeler, editor at large at The Chronicle.
