BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN AMERICA AND ARABIA
The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations: 1996-2001
A Report
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President's Perspective and Summary
As the year 2001 nears the end, I want first to thank all whose financial contributions have helped the National Council pursue its educational mission. Your gifts were an integral part of the Council’s accomplishments. Second, I want to make an appeal for the continuation of such support, and to ask that others, too, consider contributing to the Council’s programs and activities in the present and near-term future.
It is a cliché to say that 2001 has been a year like no other in the history of the U.S.-Arab relationship. It is also true that, in the twilight of previous years, many said similar things. But for reasons obvious to everyone, 2001 ends on a note like none before.
For many, the period immediately ahead can be likened to “as through a looking glass seen darkly.” The reason: the series of tragedies that, at year’s end, continue to be visited upon large numbers of innocent people in several parts of the Arab world and nearby areas. The challenges and opportunities that these tragedies pose to the U.S.-Arab relationship are obvious and compelling.
Few who support the National Council question an overarching need: the urgency with which the Council’s educational mission needs to move forward and to do so resolutely while emphasizing, wherever possible, all that is positive in the U.S.-Arab relationship. In the face of uncertainty on many fronts, inactivity, passivity, or the adoption of a wait-and-see attitude are not valid options.
The Way Forward
In helping to chart the way forward, the National Council has an important and multifaceted role to play. It welcomes the challenge. Should it be enabled with the requisite financial resources, what does the National Council propose to do in the future?
The National Council will do all that it can to provide additional opportunities for American and Arab leaders, and leaders-in-the-making, to do whatever is possible to improve the relationships between the American and Arab publics and their respective private sectors.
It will continue to work strenuously to reach out to American and Arab officials and other leaders in support of a joint continuous involvement and forward engagement in the effort to set aright our multifaceted relationships with one another.
It will remain true to its educational commitment to finding ways to improve American knowledge and understanding of Arab countries, and vice versa.
It will do whatever it can to demonstrate why the United States, on one hand, and the Arab world, on the other, are certain to retain their out-sized positions and roles of significance for each other, and the two of them together, for such a wide swath of humanity.
It will proceed with its nearly two decades-old work of building bridges, wherever possible, between the United States and its Arab friends, allies, and strategic partners.
It will go about doing so in the spirit of reciprocity and respect for each other’s culture, moral principles, and religious beliefs.
And it will do so for reasons that have everything to do with fairness and accuracy of analysis, prognosis, and prescription as to how best to place the U.S.-Arab relationship on as firm a foundation as possible.
Facilitative Factors
Neither the National Council’s nor any other worthy cause is likely to advance very far, if at all, through happenstance. Rather, the presence or absence of a string of facilitative factors will likely play decisive roles in determining its success or failure. In the National Council’s case, among the most important factors are vision, mission, leadership, energy, financial resources, and organization. No less important are conviction, commitment, and courage as well as steadfastness.
The Council’s friends and contributors know how the Council has benefited from most of these of these factors since its inception. They also know that the one component that has proven more elusive than any other is the financial wherewithal to provide consistently a range of high-caliber U.S.-Arab educational programs and activities.
Special Needs
The gifts of financial donors are what have made it possible for the National Council to make a difference in the form of steadfastly contributing to the national dialogue on American’s relations, interests, and policy objectives with key Arab countries. Such gifts remain vital to what we seek to accomplish. Contributions are especially needed at this extraordinary moment in the history of the U.S.-Arab relationship in order to enable the Council to:
Improve and increase the extent to which it distributes GulfWire, the National Council’s weekly family of e-mailed newsletters. Provided as a public service, GulfWire, which circulates directly to 3000 subscribers, and we are told, indirectly to 12,000 more, has no peer in providing a regular flow of news, analysis, and perspective on fast-breaking events and issues in the one area of the world more than any other to which the United States has mobilized and deployed its armed forces in the past decade and a half;
Increase the number of study visits for American leaders to select Arab countries. The opportunities that the National Council has provided nearly 200 Members of Congress and their chiefs of staff, defense and foreign policy advisers, and legislative and communications directors, and also nearly 1,000 national and grassroots educational, media, and professional as well as civic leaders to date, have not been without effect. The alumni of these programs are nearly unanimous in acknowledging how such a firsthand experience, like nothing else, has convinced them of the importance of improving American relations with the region as a whole and with individual countries;
Strengthen and expand the number of the Council’s Model Arab Leagues, America’s acclaimed program for developing annually, in association with 240 outstanding educators, and as many schools and institutions of higher learning, the leadership skills of more than 2,500 students, among whom are those who will manage the U.S.-Arab relationship in the future; and
Increase the nature and number of the Council’s opportunities – such as those made possible by the new Gerald Shaia Student Scholarship in Arab and Islamic Studies Fund, which was established this past year; the Malcolm Kerr High School Scholars Program (363 scholarships awarded to date), and the Joseph J. Malone Faculty and Civic Affairs Leader Fellowships in Arab and Islamic Studies (1,000 Fellowships awarded to date) – for young American leaders and their professors to participate in internship programs at the National Council and in the Council’s study programs in the Arab world.
These programs achieve two goals. One, they provide an unparalleled empirical education in the extraordinary richness of Arab and Islamic culture. Two, they demonstrate to the participants, like nothing else, the need for greater American knowledge and understanding of how important are the Arab and Islamic worlds to vital U.S. national interests, and that one of the main obstacles to improving the U.S.-Arab relationship is ignorance and lack of education.
Results
Some might ask, “What, if anything, has ‘changed’ as a result of the National Council’s efforts?” Newcomers may be unfamiliar with the nature and extent of the Council’s successes, but many “old timers” know the answer.
Some examples. No one disputes the fact that, as a direct result of the National Council’s programs:
Nearly 200 Members of Congress and key congressional staff members are far-better informed on issues of importance to the United States-Arab relationship;
The 750 professors and other educators that the National Council has taken to the region annually reach 225,000 American students, and countless more through their local media, with a fairer and more accurate depiction of the Arab and Muslim peoples, and of U.S. relations, interests, and objectives in the region;
More than 30,000 high school and university students have participated in the National Council’s premier youth leadership development program, the Model Arab Leagues, conducted annually at 17 American cities spread across the United States;
Close to 1,500 U.S. and Arab policymakers, analysts, and decision-makers from the American and Arab public and private sectors have participated in the National Council’s annual policymakers conferences;
There is now in place in more than 730 U.S. universities one or more professors who have had a direct first-hand empirical education in one or more Arab countries as a result of their participation in one or more of the Council’s Arab and Islamic Studies Programs;
363 young Americans, in a program endorsed by the White House for more than a decade, in which the President wrote them a congratulatory letter, have had a similar experience, including Arabic language training;
Some 320 students have increased their knowledge of Arab and Islamic culture and the history and development of a specific Arab country in considerable depth through participation in one of the National Council’s Arab world study programs for alumni of the Model Arab Leagues;
An additional 180 students have benefited from participation in the National Council’s professional work-study internships at the Council and other international affairs organizations in the nation’s capital;
There are now nearly 150 young Americans working in fields that relate directly or indirectly to the overall U.S.-Arab relationship who say they would never have been able to do so had it not been for their participation in one of the Council’s programs;
Nearly 60 American journalists obtained a head start in their careers through participation in the Council’s Arab World Journalism Program; and,
Where there were none before, there are now 18 regional, sub-regional, and state National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations committee affiliates located all across the United States.
All of these results, these “changes,” these measurable accomplishments that once existed only as people’s dreams, illustrate several things.
One, they represent impressive returns on the “investors” in – the financial contributors to – the National Council’s vision and mission;
Two, at the national, state, and local levels, they demonstrate an eagerness among large numbers of Americans to learn more about the Arab and Islamic worlds than would be possible through the media and films or from what passes for established thought in many public affairs arenas;
Three, in a context that is nationwide in scope, they reflect a steadily heightened awareness by Americans and many others of the innumerable challenges embedded in the task of improving America’s relations with Arabs and Muslims internationally and at home within the United States; and
Four, they form, collectively, the foundation and building blocks for a better U.S.-Arab relationship in the period ahead.
As a cost-saving measure, and in an effort to distribute news about what the National Council does through the use of modern technology, we have decided to post the Council’s Report for 1996-2001 on the Council’s web-site: www:ncusar.org. In the event you would like a hard copy, it can be obtained by downloading from this version. Otherwise, please so indicate and, in exchange for a modest contribution to cover the costs of postage and printing, we will be happy to send one. The Report highlights the direct linkage between resources and what the Council has been able to achieve over the past five years.
In reading the Report, it will be obvious how the requisite financial resources are inextricably linked to the National Council’s ability to make an even greater difference in the period ahead. Such support will be the defining factor as to how effectively the Council will be able to proceed with the monumental but not impossible tasks at hand.
We thank everyone whose previous gift has made it possible for the Council to make a positive and meaningful contribution to improving the U.S.-Arab relationship.Sincerely,
Dr. John Duke Anthony