EDUCATION | Driving tomorrow’s achievements
11 April 2008
International Students Find a Home and a Global Purpose
Earlham College is a Quaker institution stressing global education
By Richard Holden
Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, is an independent, liberal arts college committed to providing the highest-quality education in the context of a Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) institution. With an emphasis on learning and respecting the truth, the college encourages students to be active, questioning learners and to combine their intellectual pursuits with a life stressing global education, peaceful resolution of conflict, equality of persons, and high moral standards of personal conduct, both while in college and later in life. Richard Holden is the retired director of public information at Earlham College.
Tap the shoulder of any international student at Earlham College and you can be certain you are touching a visionary. The small liberal arts school tends to attract students committed to finding just and peaceful solutions for the world's upheavals. And most aren't waiting to finish their degrees before engaging the problematic world. Two who feel this compulsion keenly are Jawad Sepehri Joya of Afghanistan and Yvette Issar from Kenya. Both students are already finding many ways to apply their academic expertise to social and political troubles around the globe.
Often, international students have personal experiences with injustice in their homelands that drive their dedication. Jawad is a living example of how hope and hard work can overcome seemingly impossible circumstances. Living in the chaos of Kabul and confined to a wheelchair because of polio, this son of illiterate and impoverished Shiite Muslims faced a bleak future in the late 1990s. The ruling Taliban discouraged education generally, especially for girls or the handicapped. An Italian doctor working at a Red Cross facility recognized Jawad's potential and arranged a series of clandestine tutors for him. Languages came easily for Jawad and so did computer skills. By the time he was 13, he was working in the Red Cross facility as a programmer and beginning to envision a fulfilling life for himself.
His friendship with the doctor and with an Italian journalist he was to meet in 2002, following the fall of the Taliban, led to Jawad's liberation from war-torn Afghanistan and admission to a school in Trieste, Italy. As he was finishing his international baccalaureate diploma there, he applied for admission to colleges in the United States and Canada. Earlham was one of the academically rigorous institutions that accepted him and offered him a full scholarship.
"I couldn't be more pleased to be here," says Jawad with his broad, ever-ready grin. "Here I am able to work on things I believe in much more than I would at a large university, I think." Now in his second year at Earlham, he is concentrating his studies in the sciences, with additional coursework in the humanities and social sciences. "Given the experiences I have gone through, I've been increasingly interested in studying peace from a naturalistic point of view," he explains. "In biology, there is the issue of competition among the species. Since human beings are one of those species, I'm looking at the question from different angles—looking for ways we can be competitive in a human way." He plans to pursue that interest in graduate school, which he hopes will lead to an eventual appointment with a university, foundation, or think tank.
Ever active in the extracurricular and social life of the campus community, Jawad participates in the Model U.N. (United Nations), the Peace and Global Studies Club, Amnesty International, and the Asian Student Union. To augment his scholarship, he has a paid internship with Earlham's Peace and Global Studies (PAGS) program, researching how the PAGS curriculum can be made more effective.
Last summer he was one of 40 delegates from colleges in the United States to the Japan-America Conference at Stanford University in Stanford, California, then went on to work for the Society of Afghan Professionals in North America, based in Fremont, California. This year, Jawad's work earned him the National Peace and Justice Association's top student prize "for contributions in peacemaking and justice seeking on campus, in the community, and around the world." The honor accompanies a similar award from the Plowshares Student Peace Conference held at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana.
Now with Afghani, Italian, and American backgrounds under his belt, the 20-year-old Jawad calls himself "a global citizen," adding, "Now all I need is a global visa."
Yvette Issar is a third-year international studies major at Earlham. She was drawn to the college's Quaker heritage and expressed ethos of "non-violence, simplicity, and social justice." Yvette was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, to Indian parents. "I see myself as being from both places, although perhaps I identify more with India," she says. "When I came [to Earlham], I thought I would hate living in a small Midwestern town," she admits, "but I've found it's a wonderful place. The community of learning here is incredible, and there is such a sense of commitment among the people around you."
At Earlham, Yvette has organized a chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), which arranges face-to-face videoconferences with college students around the world to discuss global problems and seek consensus for solutions. Today there are 70 student-run AID chapters in the United States and abroad. "It all started when I went to an AID retreat and met people who had amazing ideas on how to better represent other countries to ordinary Americans, and at the same time make average Americans more accessible to people in other countries."
So far this year, Yvette has organized four conferences, engaging students in the United States with their counterparts in places like Pakistan, Australia, the Philippines, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and many other countries. Among topics the students explore have been "Global Responses to Natural Disasters" and "Should the United States Pursue Democracy Overseas?"
Like Jawad, Yvette has been deeply involved with the Model U.N. Last year she represented Lebanon at a regional Model U.N. session in Chicago. "It's putting yourself in other people's shoes to represent the interests of another country," she says. "But beyond that it's about learning how to work with other people in coordinating efforts, to make compromises for a global good."
Yvette also finds time to enjoy her passion for music as a member of the Earlham Concert Choir. Last spring, she participated in the College's Vienna Choral Semester. "It was an incredible experience," she attests, "to be able to go into the heart of Europe and sing in those glorious cathedrals. I'll never forget it."
Asked to express the most important lessons she has learned at college in the United States, Yvette rolls her eyes thoughtfully at the ceiling. "It's that community is one of the most important things a person can have. Without connections to others, and love, you are just an island in an unhappy situation. I've learned that people should take care of each other, to look after your neighbors. Perhaps I've always known that, but in the United States I really learned it."
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government
