Panel says education will improve world relations

Panel says education will improve world relations

by Elizabeth Hays
Daily O'Collegian
April 9, 2007

The right tactic and strategy is not being used in Western-Muslim world relations, speakers said Saturday at the Young Global Leaders Summit in the Student Union Theater.

The goal of the summit was to bring together young global leaders from across the U.S. for a day of workshops, speakers and discussions on how young people can take action to improve Western-Muslim World relations.

Students heard from experts and then had an opportunity to raise questions and discuss the global relationship in small groups.

The keynote speaker for the event was Michael Kraig, the director of policy analysis and dialogue at the Stanley Foundation in Muscatine, Iowa.

Education, open-mindedness and allocation of finances into educational purposes were stressed in response to how relations can be improved.

During the question and answer session following the panel, Nasrat Touqan, the OSU MSA president, asked whether the panel recommended studying abroad as a means to learn about foreign affairs.

“Less than 2 percent of the student population here at OSU will go abroad from a one to four week period,” said panelist Wade W. Watkins, a professor at Northern Oklahoma College.

“Less than one-fifth of a percent of students will go for a semester or longer.”

Respect, soft-power and dialogue were mentioned in response to how to improve communications between the Western-Muslim World and the rest of the world.

“A sweet tongue can change a hot fire into cold ash,” said Alassane Fall, an instructor in Wolof at the University of Kansas.

Panelist Michael Bracy, a Middle Eastern studies assistant professor, brought up aid programs that fail and his ideas on why.

“Because they’re too big, there is no interaction,” Bracy said.

Bracy said many musical influences have come out of the Muslim world in the past century.

He said this was a pathway used for communication between the U.S. and the Muslim world before and it could be used again.

“Rather than following the terrorists, we should be following the artists,” Bracy said.

Bracy’s research focuses on the articulations of nationalism among Palestinians during the 1920s and ’30s through mass media.