Middle East Studies Student Initiative
 

 

 
About UC Irvine

"Celebrating 40 years of innovation, the University of California, Irvine combines the strengths of a major research university with the bounty of an incomparable Southern California location. Since its opening in fall 1965, UCI has become internationally recognized for efforts that are improving lives through research and discovery, fostering excellence in scholarship and teaching, and engaging and enriching the community.

With more than 24,000 students, 1,400 faculty members and 8,100 staff, UCI is among the fastest-growing campuses in the University of California system. Increasingly a first-choice campus for students, UCI ranks among the top U.S. universities in the number of undergraduate applications and, for fall 2004, the campus admitted the most academically competitive freshman class in its history."

Mission Statement

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We the students of the University of California, Irvine believe that our esteemed university desperately needs a curriculum and programs devoted specifically to the study of the Middle East and North Africa.

In the hope of finding an immediate remedy for this situation, we the students of the University of California, Irvine respectfully request the development of a program that will incorporate not only the history and languages of the region, but also its politics, sociology, and culture. 

We want the opportunity, and we want future generations of UCI students to have the opportunity, to learn more about a region which is and will likely remain critical to world peace and America’s national interests.

We want the opportunity to eventually major in Middle East and North African Studies.  We appreciate that the development of a major is necessarily a lengthy and detailed process.  More immediately, we wish to see the enhancement of a curriculum devoted to Middle East and North African Studies, leading to the opportunity for students to minor in this field from various extant majors.

We speak on behalf of both Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern students at UCI who realize, as most Americans already do, that the geo-political conditions in the Middle East and North Africa unwittingly, but dramatically affect our lives today as they will the lives of our children.

For a number of specific reasons, UCI and the Orange County community at large, need to support the development of such a program.

A Middle East and North Africa Studies program will:

[1] Enhance an awareness of and respect for diversity on the UCI campus [2] Foster an environment conducive to the production of constructive dialogue about the Middle East; [3] Recognize and implement a serious course of academic study for interested students [4]  Help prepare students to meet the rising demand of private and public sector employment opportunities which require training in Middle East Studies [5] Facilitate broader cultural understanding among students with distinctive backgrounds from the Middle East and between those students and others without generational connections to the region [6] Provide an academic understanding of the dynamic processes which religion plays in shaping politics, society, and culture.

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