Here's what happened:
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Hi Allison,
I hope that you are doing well! My name is Kimberly King, and I am the
Coordinator for SIT Study Abroad's Morocco: Culture and Society
program. The Admissions Committee is reviewing your application so I
wanted to follow up with you about your Independent Study Project
proposal. There were some concerns regarding the biased perspective of
your ISP proposal. Though there certainly is some validity to your
topic, you don't want to start out your stay in Morocco with the biased
opinion that Moroccan Muslims mistreat Moroccan Jews. Your topic paints
a very negative picture of Moroccan Muslims before you've even landed on
Moroccan soil and begun to collect your data. Focusing on the Jewish
community is possible but you should formulate a more unbiased topic to
start with and then bring your opinions, ideas, etc. out in your final
paper once you have the research to back them up.
Coming up with an ISP topic prior to the semester can be tough, and
there are lots of ins and outs of the ISP that you will explore during
the course of the semester. As a reminder though, you will only have
three weeks in which to conduct your research and analyze your data and
then one week to write the paper., Also, keep in mind you may have to
adjust your topic or methods accordingly, and the Academic Director and
ISP advisor are prepared to help students with just that. So, please, be
prepared to be flexible.
[I cut out a few paragraphs here---not important]
I hope that this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have
any questions, and please confirm receipt of this email. You can send
your revised topic idea to me by email and then the Admissions Committee
can finish their review of your application.
Kim
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Kim,
I'm sure my proposal does sound biased----I was afraid of this! I will try, very inadequately, to defend it.
I know very little about Moroccan religious culture, but what I have gathered is that responses to the Jewish community in Morocco throughout the centuries have been mixed. The Jews have been oppressed wherever they've lived, really, and this has meant that either Christians or Muslims, depending on who had the power at the time, have been the oppressors. When Muslims were in power, they indeed granted more religious freedom and were much more tolerant of the Jewish communities than when Christians were in power. The history of Jewish-Christian relations is dark and sordid, and tons of blame is to be laid on the Christians. Moroccan Muslims seem to have treated the Jews very well throughout the course of history, particularly when compared to various Christian leaders and communities. The king of Morocco (I hope king is the proper title!) did tell Hitler when he demanded Morocco's Jews: "There are no Jews here, only Moroccans." Succinctly, I wish to study Moroccan Muslim-Jewish relations.
I want to research the life of the Moroccan Jewish community to see how it is that Jewish life has existed there. Sometimes it flourished under Muslim rule, sometimes it may have been struggling for survival. Please understand, though, that I am not entering this Morocco experience (if I am granted the opportunity to go) with a biased, anti-Muslim view. I am entering it with the knowledge that the Jews have historically been a people misunderstood and oppressed. Their oppression has been held by some scholars to be unique and different from the situations of other peoples; by some it has been held to just be another example of one group of people dominating over another, part of the ebb and flow of history. Christians have been persecuted, murdered, and oppressed Jews and Muslims; the Muslims have done the same to Christians and Jews. The Jews have never really held a position of power in which they could do so. Perhaps if they had been the powerful majority, they would have. (Are we seeing this now in Israel?) The three Abrahamic traditions have been alternatively embroiled in war (the Crusades just one instance) and in times of mutual respect and a cooperative pursuit of knowledge (the convivencia in Spain, for example).
I do not view the Muslims of Morocco as the "bad guys", by any means. They are merely a historical and current entity whose past and present attitudes towards a minority I would like to study. I welcome the opportunity to immerse myself in a Muslim country, to infuse myself with their religious practices, the ebb and flow and the rhythm of life. As a person of emotion who for some strange reason feels a connection to the Jewish people, I am saddened by their historic plight. Also as a person of emotion, I am angered by the displacement of and violence towards Palestinians, and have very mixed and confused opinions about Zionism. As a very young, inexperienced, but passionate scholar of religions and religious history, I deeply respect and have a fondness for different religions and those who practice them, and earnestly desire to understand the lives and loves of members of different religions. I do not hold a bias against my Muslim friends because Muslims have sometimes persecuted Christians and Jews. I do not hold Jews in contempt for "crucifying Christ" (a silly myth), or for the creation of a Jewish homeland, which has been shown to be more or less the oppression of one people by another oppressed people. The cycle doesn't seem to ever stop. To hold either group in contempt or to enter into study with a biased view would be wrong, both for me as a person of conscience, and for me as a historian. I cannot be biased (although I can hurt deeply) towards Christians for centuries of Christian persecution and hatred of Jews, which provided the breeding ground for anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. While emotionally involved, I strive to behave in a scholarly manner and observe Christians, Muslims, and Jews as historic entities. I wish to study their interaction, their times of mutual respect and times of conflict, in order to better understand the climate of today's world.
I don't know if I adequately defended myself at all. Perhaps my proposal should have been more thought-out? Worded in a way that indicates a genuine and earnest desire to study both groups in a way that is respectful, compassionate, and accepting? That is my intention.
If you could submit this email, my honest, off-the-cuff feelings about my proposal, to the applications committee, I would be most grateful. It is an inadequate attempt to explain to those who have not met me that I am deeply committed to compassion, mutual respect and understanding between members of different religious faiths, as well as an exposition of history and its effects on our modern world.
Thank you. While I am very much looking forward to studying this topic, I understand if the committee still finds it inappropriate. Please let me know if a complete revision of my topic is necessary. Having not set foot in Morocco, I don't know much else to study for my ISP, but I can do my best to come up with another topic!
Sincerely,
Allison Asay
-------------she responded!!!--------------
Hi Allison,
This is more than we could have asked for. You gave a good defense and definitely better articulated your respect for people of differing faiths. You should hear from the Admissions Committee in the next two to three weeks.
Kim
Hopefully they let me in!
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