Annual Report 2010 | 2011
Annual Report 2010 | 2011 “The network is not viewed as ‘Columbia abroad,’ but, rather, as Columbia embedded in what is emerging as a global community of scholarship.” Ken Prewitt, Vice President for Global Centers A Message from Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah The poet William Butler Yeats once wrote that “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Since 2009, the Columbia University Middle East Research Center (CUMERC) has lit countless fires across Jordan with studies and policy proposals, workshops and internships, seminars, roundtables, and partnerships. In its first months, CUMERC’s purview has been as wide as it has been deep. It has energized the arts, with film and music projects that teach and inspire, as much as entertain. It has helped expand and enrich the work of our Teachers’ Academy, providing training programs and partnerships that have made it a leader in the Arab World. Our young people have had access to internships. Our students and scholars have crossed cultural barriers, as well as disciplinary boundaries, opening themselves to new thinking and horizons. Workshops on conflict resolution in school classrooms, courses on financial securities, partnerships with ecology experts… the list carries on into the fields of social work, family health, child protection, and Arabic language study. From such a small beginning, CUMERC has made an incredible impact to the benefit of Jordan and the region. It is in this spirit of educational exploration that I support CUMERC’s adventure into new fields of research in Jordan. As the future unfolds, I am excited that, together, we will be sparking more fires in the years to come.
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