Akshaya with Candidate Obama

Akshaya's Field Trip! - AUC

Akshaya was part of a student delegation that visited a number of countries in the Middle East during last two weeks. She is quoted in a report about the trip in an English language newspaper from Egypt, the Daily Star.

"A delegation of students led by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a once-imprisoned democracy activist and current professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo (AUC), has returned this week from a field trip of a most unusual kind.

The much-publicized trip, alternatively described by Ibrahim as a "fact-finding mission" and "a study tour," brought 20 Egyptian and foreign students to cities and hot-spots across the Levant for meetings and panels with decision makers, activists and other students. It has been covered widely in the Arabic language media
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Akshaya Kumar, an undergraduate from George Washington University who is studying abroad at AUC, agreed. "What really sticks in my mind is seeing the reality of the Israeli Wall in the West Bank, and the check-points, and the way that policies are actually implemented." She said, "When you read about them its one thing, when you see them it's another. You can feel the tension between the communities. There is so much hatred and anger and inability to see people as people."

According to Ibrahim, putting a human face on regional conflict is one of the main goals of these study tours. "No matter how much brainwashing and animosity there is, human beings can always relate to one another as human beings." He says: "That is why I traveled to Israel, Palestine and Lebanon with my students this year with this second generation of researchers. Because we can't make assumptions about anyone — Israelis, Palestinians, Hamas, Hizbullah — anyone."

For the complete news article, please see http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5160