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Dialogue of Civilizations

my experiences leading students to Jordan, Egypt, Oman, Turkey, the Balkans, and beyond

Jeddah, rewind

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January 11, 2012

Here's my brother Samer Abu-Ghazaleh, the mastermind, mover-shaker, and energetic leader of our first-ever Northeastern Alumni event in Saudi Arabia.

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Srebrenica - connecting Anne Frank (1945) to Srebrenica (1995)

July 18, 2016

Enroute from Sarajevo to Belgrade, we made the most important visit of our program thus far, to Potocari Memorial of the Srebrenica massacre/genocide of July 1995. Our visit occurred 21 years almost to the exact day when the killing fields of Srebrenica ended.

Interview with Dr. Essam El-Erian, Muslim Brotherhood

February 27, 2011

This is my final post during my time in Cairo this week. I’m leaving my “second home” (Cairo) early Monday morning, returning to my “first home” of Boston. There is far too much I have learned to capture in a blog or a diary or a book; I am sorry to leave this country at this historic time but I am happy to return home all the same. And I am happy to prepare for our return in May, insha’Allah, with our two Dialogues (Journalism and Arabic) plus potentially our third Dialogue (“soundscapes of the Mediterranean”). This inability to capture everything, retain it, hold it, and especially to communicate it is my biggest challenge – and my being here demonstrates both my solution and my mission: to be here in person. It has long been my mission to bring Americans and others to Egypt to experience for themselves, unfiltered through American media or the web or me, and to learn from Egyptians themselves, first-hand, person-to-person, in “dialogue” together. (photo: Dr. Essam ...

You can't get there (Serbia) from here (Kosovo) - go to Montenegro!

July 22, 2011

“You can’t cross this boundary from here [the Kosovo “border”/Administrative boundary]. You’ll have to go to Montenegro and then enter Serbia from there.” Thus sayeth the Serbian policeman at the boundary/border, yesterday (Thursday) around 3:30 pm. The reason? We had a stamp on our passports that read “Republic of Kosovo”, which Serbia does not recognize as independent nation-state (nor do a small number of nation-states of the international community – Russia, Spain, Greece, and 6 other members of the EU). “Kosovo is Serbia.” What he was proposing was for us to “re-enter” Kosovo (1/4 th of a mile back from where we came); return to the town of Mitroveca (where we just left 90 minutes ago); cut over to the West, and enter Montenegro (another 90 minutes-2 hours); then drive to the Montenegro-Serbia border (another hour); then drive until we catch up with the road we could have been on – only one hour from the point on the map where we were standing that ver...