Post-Sept. 11 fears have led to the suspension of Georgetown’s study abroad program in Alanya, Turkey this semester and have kept all but a handful of Georgetown students from studying this spring in the Middle East. The Alanya program is one of Georgetown’s two owned-and-operated study abroad programs and held the maximum number of students last year. It has been suspended two other times in its 12-year history: during the Gulf War and the period following a 1998 earthquake.

Deborah Brown, associate director for Overseas Studies, cited parental concerns as the main reason students did not enroll for spring study in Turkey and the Middle East.

“It’s all about Sept. 11,” she said. “Students’ parents were more reluctant to send students abroad. They weren’t interested in taking chances.” No Georgetown students are studying in the Middle East now unless they signed up before Sept. 11, she said.

The main fears, according to Brown, were of terrorist reprisals against Americans because of the war in Afghanistan and of the conflict there spreading to other parts of the Middle East.

The deadline for applications to study abroad at Georgetown’s McGhee Center in Turkey was Oct. 12, five days after the U.S. began its bombing campaign in Afghanistan and just slightly more than a month after the terrorist attacks.

Professor Scott Redford, director of the Alanya program, felt that in the immediate aftermath of the attacks most parents simply wanted their children to stay near them. Several students had filled out applications, he said, but withdrew them after Sept. 11, saying “my parents won’t even let me apply.”

Redford, who spoke to many parents over the phone, said the parents he spoke the most with either lived or worked in Manhattan. With children attending school near the site of the second attack, most parents told him, ” `I want my kid near me,’ ” Redford said. “[They didn’t like] the idea that you would send your kid off to a remote part of the world. They didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Shields Weaver’s (COL ’04) parents had a similar reaction. Weaver had planned to study abroad her junior year in Egypt, since the language spoken there was closest to what she had studied. “But after Sept. 11, my parents said no,” she said. Although she was not as worried as her parents, she said she nevertheless had concerns about studying in a Middle-Eastern country.

“What if you couldn’t get home, what if the diplomacy fell apart?” she said. She said she now intends to study in Morocco, because “that is closer to Europe.”

For the first time, the Georgetown Arabic Studies Department is considering rescinding the requirement that Arabic studies majors study abroad in an Arab-speaking country to accommodate students who do not wish to do so. At the same time, Georgetown is looking to expand its study abroad programs to countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Yemen.

Enrollment rates for study programs overseas have always been affected by world events, Brown said. The State Department also issues travel warnings for certain countries; Georgetown has not sent students to Israel, for instance, for the past three semesters.

Nonetheless, enthusiasm to study abroad seems to be on the rebound, according to Brown. “Students have already expressed a lot of interest in next spring’s program,” she said. She and Redford stressed the safe conditions that exist for students in overseas programs, especially in Alanya.

“I would go back to Alanya right now,” Matt Axelrod (SFS ’02), who studied in Turkey his junior year, said. “Everything is completely safe.”

He added that the people he remains in contact with in Alanya expressed frustration that the program was canceled. “They’re upset because everyone thinks they’re uslim fanatics,” he said.

Redford also noted that there is a tendency to lump Turkey with other countries in the Middle East, even though it is a NATO member and affiliated with the European Union. And while Turkey has no official religion, there may have been a tendency to associate it with more fundamentalist Islamic states, he said.

“Part of the purpose of a program like this is to educate people about that part of the world,” he said. This year’s cancellation is a “setback, but a minor one.”

“I’m not at all surprised, and I’m not upset,” Brown said. “Alanya is a very unique and exciting program. We’re hoping students and parents will understand that.”