After spending the summer as a journalist in Iraq, Christian Chung (SFS ’15) looked to his experience to found the U.S.-Middle East Youth Network, an international group that joins students in both regions to debate and discuss foreign policy.
“I … had the opportunity to really engage with college students focusing on many of the same issues and academic areas and interests as me,” Chung, now president of the network, said. “There was no real opportunity to broadcast their thoughts and policy proposals or to really be involved in the public discourse on critical policy issues.”
The network, which Chung officially founded in late February, encourages lively debate on foreign policy and socioeconomic issues.
“The core of our mission is really to provide a forum that gives young people in the U.S. and Middle East a platform to come up with and advocate for policy ideas, but from the youth perspective,” Chung said.
Chung began to develop the network in December, and the leadership team is now composed of 15 Georgetown students. The administrative center of the group is located at Georgetown, while the network itself currently includes 45 students in the Middle East, specifically at the University of Kurdistan-Hawler and the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani.
Already, the network has founded the Middle East Youth Policy Forum, which sponsors a speaker series and an interactive blog.
“Being able to engage with students on these topics [through the speakers] brought to light the fundamentally different perspectives of students in Iraq or Egypt,” Chung said.
According to Chung, the organization ultimately hopes to start an annual youth policy conference, inviting students from D.C. and the Middle East to participate in expert panels and present on policy ideas.
Members said that the network offers students the opportunity to engage and interact with students outside of the U.S.
“I was immediately interested and drawn by the network’s focus on connection between students in the U.S. and the Middle East,” leadership board member Max Harris (COL ’15) said. “This is a unique initiative with a lot of potential.”
External Relations Head Will Simons (COL ’16) agreed.
“The network seeks to allow interested students to share their research and opinions with students from the region who have direct, firsthand experience of policy implications,” Simons said.
Hawdang Kamal, a student at the American University of Iraq Sulaimania, agreed that the network provides an opportunity to connect American and Iraqi students.
“The network gives us a great chance to re-build the ties between the East and West. The gap that history has made between the two does not work anymore,” Kamal wrote in an email. “We believe that we are all living in a circle and we cannot leave it, for we are bounded by each other. … This kind of network is the best effort [that] has ever made to make the circle enhanced by giving everyone the same chance to go across.”
