By Abdulrahman Bindamnan, University of Minnesota PhD Student
The civic crisis in Yemen has motivated and shaped my research interests in US higher education. Having spent my formative years in Yemen before joining the American higher education space, I developed a bifurcated intellectual identity that rendered me an anomaly in the university. When I first arrived to the United States, I majored in religion and psychology at the University of Miami. I consider the psychological level of analysis as a powerful analytical tool to understand human nature; I also consider religion a guiding force that has shaped human nature for centuries. When I graduated, the crisis in Yemen intensified so development became an urgent necessity. As such, I enrolled in the international development MSEd program at the University of Pennsylvania. When I graduated, the crisis in Yemen worsened, so I joined the international development PhD program at the University of Minnesota.
When reflecting on my experience here in the United States, Gopen and Gretchen are the giant teachers on whose shoulders I stand. Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University—George Gopen—taught me how the English language operates. I benefited greatly from learning his groundbreaking scholarship—called the Reader Expectation Approach—which teaches writing from the perspective of the reader, the most crucial interlocutor in the communication process. In addition, I benefited from studying with and learning from a gifted academic coach—Gretchen—who adopts a holistic approach to nourish not only the scholar but also the person.
When I interned with UNESCO, I deployed Gopen’s scholarship to help many aspiring authors in writing with greater clarity and precision. I worked with many international students to develop a deep understanding of prose—of how the arrangement of words in the page affect their reception by prospective readers. Unfortunately, academic writing is notoriously known for its turgid, incomprehensible style. In that sense, I reject the academic hubris that obfuscates rather than clarifies knowledge. In my academic and professional writing, I strive for clarity above all qualities of style, because I would rather be clearly wrong than obscurely right.
Reflecting on my last six years in the United States, my experience has been at once challenging and stimulating. I say “challenging” because I literally have to figure out everything on my own; I say “stimulating” because I delight in learning new knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Coming from a developing country like Yemen, I find the United States as one of the most challenging environments I have encountered. Competition is fierce in all domains, including social, political, and educational. It is a capitalist society of the highest order, where capitalism seems to govern all affairs from the courtroom to the classroom and to even the bedroom.
To improve education in Yemen, we should study its Islamic and Arabic history. Why? Because the Islamic history had once pioneered the frontier of science and civilization for hundred of years, but then such upward progress has declined. What caused the decline? Although I am aware that current discourses consider the language of “decline” pejorative, I nonetheless use such language because to say that the Arabic and Islamic world used to lead great intellectual civilizations and then declined is an objective, verifiable fact. To answer the question of “decline,” we cannot escape history and jump to the present, because history provides a window through which to understand—and therefore address—contemporary challenges.
The best way to describe the contemporary situation in Yemen is to start at the year of 1990, when Yemen united its southern and northern parts. Ever since the unification, Yemen has civil problems, which culminated with the uprising of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Arab Spring did not start the problems in the region but rather served as a catalyst to instigate problems that have been suppressed for decades. Again, understanding the current situation in Yemen requires a close reading of its history. In fact, most of the political, religious, and cultural problems in the Middle East stem from historical roots, usually dating all the way back to the birth of Islam, more than 1400 years ago.
When thinking about international crises, quick and technical fixes will not address the essence of the problem. Perhaps the best way for Americans to help is to distance themselves from the universality of the American experiment. How American society developed is not necessarily how the society in Yemen should develop. Where US foreign affairs in the Middle East is concerned, inaction is the best action, for three reasons. First, the United States does not have a positive image in the region, so any involvement will likely lead to disastrous outcomes. Second, although the Middle East currently is in chaos, Middle Easterners have the self-agency to resolve their own internal conflicts, without the interference of external players. Third, if we read Western history, we will learn that the Enlightenment Renaissance in Europe emerged from an internal, dark, and violent history—so why not let the people in the Middle East resolve their predicaments with the modern world by and for themselves.
Americans, like all people in the world, are the product of their history and present circumstances. They tend to view the world through capitalistic lenses, even when they vehemently disagree with the negative consequences of capitalism. When dealing with the case of Yemen, we should take a serious look at the tension between “Islam” and “modernity”—for therein lies most of the real challenges of Yemen. Simply put, if Americans seek to achieve international development in Yemen, they need to understand the ways of being, doing, and knowing of the people of Yemen.