Engaging Difference: Student Experience on the Hilltop and Beyond

July 18, 2016

This conversation is part of the Berkley Center's tenth anniversary celebrations.

The Doyle Engaging Difference Program and the Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs Certificate (REWA) bring Georgetown faculty and students together to address challenges of religious and cultural pluralism around the world through research, teaching, and outreach. Signature Berkley Center programs such as the Junior Year Abroad Network, Doyle Seminars, Doyle Undergraduate Fellows, and the Education and Social Justice Project engage with issues of difference along multiple dimensions, including the religious, cultural, national, social, and ethical. Over the past decade, hundreds of students have participated in these programs or served as research assistants at the center.

This conversation brings together members of the Berkley Center community and outside experts to discuss the importance of this work and the ongoing challenges it presents in a world frequently confronted by sharp divisions, polarization, and violence. Participants include William Doyle, chair of Georgetown’s Board of Directors, Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, Melody Fox Ahmed, the center’s assistant director for programs, and two center alumni, Aamir Hussain and Joelle Rebeiz.

Q: How does engaging with religious, cultural, and other forms of difference enrich liberal education in a global era?

Eboo Patel:
So many of the “big questions” that make up liberal education—What is the good life? What does it mean to be human?—are questions central to the great religious traditions. Among the great questions of liberal education and contemporary times is how people from a range of religious identities can build a common life together.


William Doyle:
I don’t think you can really be considered educated if you allow prejudice to form your life. By engaging your limitations, you open yourself up to true understanding and free yourself to make a significant contribution to the common good.


Joelle Rebeiz:
Unfortunately, we live in an age where misinformation about different cultures and religions is running rampant, which has proven to be a real detriment to mutual respect and shared cross-cultural understanding. Learning through engagement is one of the most salient tools we have to ensure that no one’s judgment is clouded by stereotypes or false perceptions, and that every person is given the respect that he or she deserves.

Aamir Hussain:
We are living in a time where constructive dialogue across difference seems to be breaking down in many aspects of society, notably in the political arena. Therefore, engagement across difference is a way to inject this feature of American life back into liberal education and allow for the possibility of constructive, joint action on issues of mutual importance.

Melody Fox Ahmed:
Around the world, universities are globalizing—we cannot help but be connected through technology, media, and shared interests. Now students have the chance to interact daily with their counterparts from other countries, religions, and cultures—on their own campus or in a Skype session with another classroom in Doha or China. The knowledge and friendships these kinds of encounters build are significant, and fulfill the goal of liberal education to prepare students to encounter complexity and diversity through a deep and nuanced knowledge of the wider world.

Q: How does such engagement with difference, and the skills it engenders, help graduates to navigate their careers in a globalizing world?

William Doyle:
Post graduation you encounter the real world on a daily basis. You soon realize you have to learn to relate to people who look at the world from a completely different perspective. Consideration and empathy for their perspective is the only way you will help solve problems, which is at the core of being women and men for others.

Eboo Patel:
Interfaith and intercultural engagement teaches us that we do not have to agree on a theological or philosophical level in order to genuinely learn about and respect the worldview of another person. It teaches us that we can be in service with one another, act toward common causes, and not agree in many ways. Navigating various careers in today’s world—whether medicine, teaching, law, journalism, entertainment, or the not-for-profit sector—requires the ability to understand one’s own worldview and to navigate diversity well.

Joelle Rebeiz:
By interacting with people from an array of cultures and backgrounds at Georgetown, I became much more open to looking for jobs outside of the United States and found a great opportunity with University College Dublin and developed a strong network to support me with career advice. That’s the beauty of it: enabling encounters with diverse individuals who have both encouraged me to consider new opportunities and provided useful and impactful advice.

Aamir Hussain:
In my field of medicine, engagement with difference is absolutely necessary because many of the challenges are global and intercultural. Consider the Ebola epidemic. While all health professionals agree on the fundamental value of treating the sick and combating the disease’s spread, it took a multinational, joint effort with people of different national, political, and cultural backgrounds to come together to provide solutions.

Melody Fox Ahmed:
There were over one million foreign students studying in the United States this past year. Many go on to become leaders in their countries. The cultural experience that they have here—where dialogue, debate, and deep engagement with difference is encouraged—returns with them to their home countries where it may not be as common. That is all the more reason for us to promote and deepen interreligious and intercultural dialogue on our own campuses.

Q: Violent religious extremism remains a persistent problem in world affairs. How can intercultural and interfaith dialogue in a university setting help to address it?

Joelle Rebeiz:
Bringing individuals from different backgrounds together serves to highlight that this extremism is not endemic to any one ethnicity, faith, or culture. Intercultural and interfaith dialogue at Georgetown and other universities serves to shed light on the objective socioeconomic conditions that give rise to extremism, as well as the subjective experiences that can draw individuals toward it.

William Doyle:
The problem of extremism will not be resolved overnight and will be alleviated one step at a time. Without sufficient understanding of intercultural and interfaith differences, the first step is impossible. That is where universities, as places of learning and dialogue, have a critical role to play—both in educating students and in modeling deeper tolerance for the wider society.

Eboo Patel:
Extremism grows out of an “us” versus “them” mentality when people don’t have access to healthy relationships with people who are different from themselves. This is why it is important that we break down boundaries early on. It’s important to incorporate interfaith issues into both the general education curriculum and also to create pathways for students to develop deeper expertise. One of our successful approaches at the Interfaith Youth Core is to take stories about thorny religious diversity issues from the front page of the New York Times, present them to students, and ask them how they would lead in a given situation.

Aamir Hussain:
Universities like Georgetown should empower students to use their talents and academic interests to fight against religious extremism, but also emphasize that this work must occur outside the university setting. Too often, interfaith dialogue can devolve into echo chambers where like-minded people only “preach to the choir.” Universities can use interfaith and intercultural dialogue to teach etiquette of disagreement, and show students how to create coalitions of diverse people. Ultimately, universities should emphasize that students must harness their education to make a difference in the real world.

Melody Fox Ahmed:
A Pakistani minister recently said that once there are economic alternatives, no young person wants to go to war. Economic opportunities come through education. Making higher education a viable and accessible opportunity for young people around the world, through promoting more exchange programs, scholarships, and government initiatives like the Fulbright program to countries where violent extremism is drawing young people, will go a long way toward addressing grievances often blamed on religious fanaticism. Young Pakistanis don’t hate America. They want to study here. But opportunities to do so remain limited.

Q: How does interfaith service outside the classroom impact the educational experience?

Eboo Patel:
One of the easiest things universities can do is to create spaces where people from different cultural and religious traditions can interact with one another and work together in healthy ways. Encouraging interfaith service projects and dinners are some of the easiest ways this can happen. We have to show that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc. are not enemies, but people who have a different religious identity but who also hold similar civic values. Interfaith service allows students the opportunity to build fruitful and trusting relationships with people whom they may have once feared.

Joelle Rebeiz:
Service should be a cornerstone of every student’s undergraduate experience. In my case, interfaith service through my time at the Berkley Center gave me a chance to engage with people from different backgrounds in a way that transcended the often-sterile classroom interactions. It serves to make the realities of others less abstract, while also giving them a chance to learn about your experiences as well.

Aamir Hussain:
Interfaith service is a good way for students to apply their dialogue sessions toward practical goals. It also can involve a wide variety of students with different interests. For example, religion majors can work on building partnerships, business majors can work on making the service work sustainable, political science majors can work to use the service as a form of advocacy, etc. The possibilities are limitless.

Melody Fox Ahmed:
Interfaith service work done outside the classroom should be clearly linked and reflected upon inside the classroom as well. Educating faculty about how to engage these questions of difference and fostering dialogue through their pedagogy should be a priority. The world has changed since we talked about the end of history and the triumph of secularism—our teaching and student engagement models must change as well. Thousands can take an online MOOC, but the one-to-one interactions with faculty and colleagues in the classroom discussing how interfaith service impacts peacebuilding or development work, for example, cannot be replaced.

Q: How has your time at the Berkley Center impacted your career trajectory and personal growth?

Joelle Rebeiz:
By trusting me to carry out research projects, interview people of interest, attend and report on interesting events—while making me feel like my work and opinions were valued—my Berkley Center mentors truly allowed me to grow as a student, worker, and person. The research and writing I did about interreligious and intercultural dialogue as a Doyle Fellow also made me realize the extent to which I am challenged and motivated by this kind of academic and intellectual environment, and just how much I enjoy this work. In fact, I decided to pursue M.A. studies abroad in Ireland because of this.

Aamir Hussain:
At the Berkley Center, I had opportunities to explore diverse disciplines and how they related to each other and interfaith dialogue. The Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs course taught by Thomas Banchoff was a great example of an interdisciplinary course that helped me focus on my research interests. The Berkley Center was also the first place that I began writing articles for the White House Interfaith Service Blog, and eventually the Huffington Post Religion blog; these communication skills have become incredibly important to me as a future doctor, where I seek to use my status to advocate for health policy changes.

Opens in a new window