Tailored Program
The institute is designed for graduate students and upper class undergraduate in journalism programs. It will consist of two major components: Seminars
Half the day will be devoted to seminars led by the program’s core faculty, supplemented with talks by experts on a wide array of subjects, including:
- The history of the Middle East
- Modern-day regional politics
- The role of religion in the Arab world
- The function of civil society organizations
- The challenges of political and social change
- Current and past U.S. Middle East policy and its perception in the Arab world
- How public opinion is shaped in the Arab world
- The state of the media in Arab society
Site visits
The other half of the day will involve site visits, e.g.:
- Government ministries and opposition party offices
- Mosques and centers of religious study
- Civil society groups
- International foundations and think tanks
- The media (Qatar will include an afternoon at al-Jazeera)
Tangible “Take-Away”
- Students will not ‘just’ take away from the Institute a wealth of knowledge. They will also return home with concrete evidence of their ability to analyze the region, in the form of a substantial piece of reportage.
- By the end of the first week of the Institute, all students will choose a topic on which they plan to write a report by the end of the program, based primarily on the interviews and site visits.
- Participants will be paired into two-person teams and assigned to produce a feature-length newspaper, television or radio piece. The stories will be posted on the Center's website and, if of sufficient quality, published by US or Arab media outlets.
Assignments and Evaluation
To prepare for the Intensive, students will be given a list of books and other readings they will be required to complete before their arrival in Cairo. That way, they will have a foundation on which to build - and they won't be sitting in their room reading when they should be experiencing the Middle East. For the same reason, there will be no exam.
Evaluation will be based on (active) participation and the reporting assignment.