New surge of Americans studying in the Arab world

Growing up in an observant Jewish family outside Boston, Mimi Asnes was always interested in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, her focus was on Israel, a topic of almost daily conversation at the Jewish day school she attended until the ninth grade.

But as a sophomore at Harvard, the diminutive Ms. Asnes struck up a friendship with a Palestinian-American woman who shared her love of hiking and the outdoors. That bond - and her friend's different perspective on Israel - sparked an interest in the broader Middle East. "I'd never met anyone who I liked and respected who had any animosity toward Israel,'' says Asnes. "I began to question the assumptions I grew up with."

Today, Asnes is one of a record number of Americans studying Arabic and the Arab world. They are on the leading edge of an educational boom that has seen the initial shock and anger at the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks feed a greater engagement with a region long neglected by US students and universities.

This fall about 480 Ameri- cans are studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo (AUC), more than double the pre-9/11 enrollment. A Modern Language Association survey from fall 2002 found that 10,600 American students were studying Arabic, up from 5,500 in 1998. Educators say that number has continued to rise, with dozens of universities adding Arabic to their curricula.

The numbers are still modest when compared to the estimated 350,000 US students studying German. The surge in interest now mirrors the numbers of Americans who studied Russian during the cold war. But even before Sept. 11, the absence of Arab students reflected an American blind spot, given the Arab World's long history of conflict, vast oil reserves, and its 280 million people. In testimony to Congress this year, Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria, said the State Department has only five diplomats with Arabic strong enough to defend US policies on Arab TV.

While many of the more advanced students like Asnes began their studies before Sept. 11, almost all say the increased US focus on the region has deepened the incentive to learn, with a surging number of job opportunities back home for people with proficiency in the language. "I just found myself really drawn to the language,'' says Khalid Wulfsberg, a rangy grad student from Murfreesboro, Tenn., who prefers his Arab first name to his given name, Paul, which sounds like an unpleasant bodily function in Arabic. "But as an American, the context of the war is inescapable."

Asnes also says her interest in the language has little to do with Sept. 11 or the war in Iraq. She says that after a year spent working at a Palestinian women's shelter in Nazarath, she came to see language as crucial to understanding. "We've seen the importance of words in spinning the Middle East conflicts,'' she says. "I want to be in control of my own spin, and that puts less distance between me and what's happening. When I was in Nazareth, just after a year of Arabic, I was able to make connections with people that would have been totally different if I only spoke Hebrew."

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