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In 2015, the National Council established the HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Fellows Program to enable emerging American educators to visit Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf countries.
The fellowship program is designed to expose a new generation of American college and university faculty members to the Arab world through National Council study visits. The visits empower the educators to become ambassadors of goodwill who can transmit increased knowledge and understanding of the Arab world so as to counter any imagined "clash of civilizations" as well as counteract false stereotypes of Arab culture and civilization that have tainted American understanding of Islam and the Arab world.
The HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Fellows Program, with the support of Alwaleed Philanthropies, represents a long-term investment in faculty professional development, curriculum enrichment, Arabic language training, and student enlightenment. In the throes of what was once described as a global war on terror and now entangled in a virulent and unending wave of Islamophobia it is vitally important that these topics be approached in an informed, thoughtful, and empathetic way by a new generation of classroom scholars who challenge their students to think, who question the descriptions provided by the mainstream media and extreme voices on the worldwide web, and who can provide alternative sources of accurate and credible information, studied opinion, and on-the-ground experience.