Declining opportunities for Arabic immersion

I've often written about my frustrating with U.S. government bureaucracy that prevents me from fully immersing in Arabic-speaking culture.  The longer I study Arabic and live in the region, the more and more I'm concerned about declining opportunities for Americans to master the language.

In a nutshell, Arabic is so hard that it takes constant immersion to learn it well.  Living in an Arabic-speaking country is not enough; you need to be hearing and using Arabic constantly.  Believe it or not, there aren't that many places in the Middle East where an American can easily do that, and U.S. government policies compound the problem.

I'm trying to figure out what to advise the Olmsted Foundation about future Arabic-speaking scholars, because there just aren't that many good options.  The Gulf is way too Westernized.  In Morocco the dialect is vastly different from the rest of the Arab world, and French is used as often as not.  Jordan is probably the best place in the area to study Arabic, but the U.S. Embassy will only host one scholar at a time and has turned off other immersion programs because of security concerns.  That leaves the same standby option that the Olmsted Foundation has relied on for years: the American University of Cairo in Egypt.  The problem is that, from everything I've heard, AUC is terrible for immersion.  Egyptians who go study there are from the super-elite and speak fluent English.  Worse, AUC relocated recently to an isolated new campus far from Cairo.  The $400 million campus has all the amenities a student could want, except for one tiny thing... language immersion.

That view of AUC was confirmed by this article, passed along by the Arabist.  Ursula Lindsay writes, "The Center for Arabic Study Abroad--a premier language program financed primarily by the U.S. Department of Education--has just relocated to the American University in Cairo's downtown campus."  Why?  Students hated the new campus.  Everyone spoke English, and they were isolated from real Egyptian culture.  95% of them felt that the location adversely impacted their ability to learn Arabic.  I'm glad CASA was able to relocate, but American students at all levels will still be forced to live and study in the new campus.

Americans face declining opportunities to be immersed in Arabic.  I hate to always be harping on this subject, but I see it as a serious national security issue.  I imagine the situation is similar for many other strategic languages.

An Evening at Jebel al-Qala'a

Jebel al-Qala'a, photo from Flickr

Jebel al-Qala'a is the highest point in Amman, with a commanding view of the city that has attracted builders for millennia.  Dominating the hilltop is an Islamic Umayyad palace.  Within a few minutes walk you'll discover a Byzantine basilica, a temple of Hercules built during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and an archaeological museum stocked with treasures from the prehistoric era up through the 15th century.  You can look down on Amman's Roman amphitheater, surrounded on all sides by an endless vista of contemporary apartment buildings.

During the months of July and August, you'll also find a giant performing stage and stadium seats sandwiched between all these ruins because  Jebel al-Qala'a is the venue for Jordan's largest annual music festival.

My wife and I celebrated our anniversary by going to hear Trio Khoury.  We picked the concert at random out of the lineup because it was closest to our anniversary, but we weren't disappointed... the Khoury brothers played an extraordinary fusion of jazz and classical Arabic music (listen here).  The venue was great, providing a contrast of ancient and modern: a modern performing stage beside the 1300+ year-old Umayyid palace, the Muslim call to prayer ringing through the city in the moments before the concert, the skyline of green-lit mosques and 20 or 30 fireworks shows from Jordanians who were probably still celebrating their tawjihi results.  I don't often feel the magic of the "orient", but these spellbinding musicians evoked it.  This was Amman at its best.

Tawjihi Day!

This morning as I was driving out of my neighborhood, a car whipped past me with three or four teenage girls leaning out the windows and sunroof, waving their arms and screaming.  Aadii, as the Jordanians say.  Typical.  Just another day in Jordan.  Probably a group on their way home from an all-night wedding.  Once I hit the main road, though, I heard a cacophony of car horns, saw a dazzling show of hazard lights, and saw more teenagers spilling out of car windows and sunroofs.  The police were out in force.  By the time I got cut off for the fourth or fifth time by speeding teens, I was getting pretty annoyed.  I was also totally confused.  It's normal for Jordanians to celebrate weddings or soccer victories with mawaakib al-faraH (something like "convoys/parades of joy"), but I'd never seen one at 9:00am.

When I bought the day's paper, I finally figured out what the occasion was.  Results were released this morning for the tawijihi, a massive comprehensive exam that Jordanian students spend their last year of high school preparing for.  It's a much bigger deal than the SAT, because the tawjihi score is the single determinant for a Jordanian's success after high school.  University acceptance and job prospects all hinge on the tawjihi.  A student who botches the tawjihi will suffer for life.  Obviously, the teens wreaking havoc on Amman this morning were quite happy that they passed.

The release of tawjihi scores was front-page news in the local paper.  The papers also delivered warnings from the Ministry of Education that the release of tawjihi scores typically brings great danger.  The ministry pleaded with students not to engage in risky driving behavior.  Special police and security procedures were enacted for the day.  The ministry noted that the last time tawjihi scores were released, 400 students had their driver's licenses suspended because of violations.

UPDATE: read a sarcastic Jordanian's perspective here.

Writing about ordinary life

One of the paradoxes of living in a foreign country is that, before long, it starts to feel normal.  You realize that human nature is constant, and that life basically consists of the same routines across the world.  People go to work, get married and have kids, throw birthday parties, and take their families to the park.  Once you get past the Islamic calls to prayer and the occasional flock of sheep milling about in the street, life in Jordan feels pretty normal.

I don't usually write about the day-to-day stuff of life here, because I take it for granted.  Every once in a while, though, I'm reminded how little the average American knows about this part of the world.  These reminders often come in the form of questions, like whether or not my wife has to wear a burqa (almost nobody wears a burqa here) or how I cope with the food (it's amazing) or if I'm afraid I'll be killed by terrorists (no).  I'm shocked by some of the far-right-wing hysteria that I occasionally encounter from people who don't have the slightest idea about Jordan or the Middle East.

I've realized that it's important to convey something of the day-to-day life here in Jordan.  The sensational and explosive aspects of the Middle East are what make the news and feed popular American perception.  It's important that Americans get a glimpse of the other 99% of life here.  So with that said, I will be attempting to write more posts about ordinary life in Jordan.

What I'm Reading: Soft Power

I've been plowing through books lately.  Every one of them deserves a quality review, which I never have time to write, so I consequently haven't written anything.  I guess something is better than nothing, so here goes.

I hear a lot about "soft power" these days.  Joseph Nye brought the term into both popular and academic discourse, and now it appears everywhere from IR articles to political speeches to university lectures.  My professors at UJ are particularly fond of Joseph Nye and like to speculate about what soft power means -- usually in the context of American foreign policy.  I've had a nagging sense that many people who use the term "soft power" don't understand what it means, so I finally decided to read the book.

Nye defines soft power as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.  It arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies."  When Nye unpacks this definition, the result is about what I expected: a lot of emphasis on multi-lateralism, coalition building, public diplomacy, cultural exchanges, and foreign policies that win friends rather than alienating them.  Nothing struck me as particularly novel, but Nye has composed an organized, systematic presentation for what soft power is and how it can be employed.

As I read the book, I compared it to what many of my UJ classmates think "soft power" means.  To Nye, soft power is still a means of power -- it is ultimately about attracting others to willingly support your national interests.  Also, soft power is necessary but it is not sufficient; hard power will always have its place.  Nye doesn't go into broader issues of statecraft, but I'm sure he would agree that policymakers do what they must to protect national interests.  His point is that they can make their job easier if they can attract willing partners rather than resorting to coercion or payments.

Some of my classmates, on the other hand, seem to think "soft power" means something like "being nice and being pacifist."  They see the eight years under President George W. Bush as a nightmare of American bellicosity; they desperately want a change.  They want the U.S. to send its army home, stop intervening around the world, stop supporting Israel, stop selling weapons abroad, stop provoking Iran, etc.  Their assumption is that if America pursues these "soft" policies instead of "hard" militarized policies, the problems in their region will be solved.  I feel a lot of compassion for these students because they must cope with so many local and regional problems, and they live in constant fear of war.  But at the same time, there is no question that their view of American power is naive.  They believe that hard power leads to war and soft power leads to peace.  That is absolutely not the case.  Maintaining stability and building real peace requires the delicate balancing of all forms of hard and soft power.

With that said, these students demonstrate to me why American soft power is so important.  They are afraid.  They are sandwiched between squabbling neighbors who are never more than a hair's breadth from another war.  Their economy is stagnant and they can't land jobs.  Their government is a mess and seems to be deteriorating.  They want something to believe in, something to give them hope for their future.  A lot of them still see greatness in the United States, once they look past what they see as its disastrous foreign policy.

When one of my curious professors asked to see my Kindle, I showed it to him and told him I was reading Nye's "Soft Power"--one of his favorite books.  Two female students, Muslim girls who wear the hijab and are dedicated to human rights and conflict resolution, looked at each other.  "Huwa saHabna," one of them said earnestly to the professor.  He is our friend.  She was talking about me, and she meant something much bigger than our friendship in the classroom.  I get this a lot at the University.  These students are pleading with me to go back to the United States, enter the halls of power, and somehow make a difference on their behalf.  They want American leaders who listen to their problems and needs, understand them, and work to help them.  That is a tremendous opportunity for Americans.  Unfortunately U.S. soft power is sorely lacking here.  I see the deficit every day.

Those who get it and those who don't

My favorite quote in the Earlybird today comes from Air Force ISR Chief Lt Gen David Deptula: "Al-Qaeda doesn't have a JCIDS process," he said, referring to a procurement process that imposes delays of several years on new military technology.  He is pushing for procurement reform so we can get next-generation unmanned systems on the battlefield faster.

The worst quote comes from retired Air Force fighter pilot Lt Gen Thomas McInerey, speculating on a U.S. attack on Iran: "It will be primarily an air attack with covert work to start a 'velvet' revolution so [the] Iranian people can take back their country."  Does anyone actually believe that's what will happen if we bomb Iran?  We should have learned by now that bombing foreign countries doesn't spark democratic transformation.  Neither does using covert work to foment revolutions.