Teaching the “Clash of Civilizations” in Qatar

When Samuel Huntington published his infamous essay, “The Clash of Civilizations” in 1993, his theories prompted an animated debate across the disciplines both inside and outside of the United States. Although Huntington participated actively in these debates, he may not have imagined how the globalization of education would offer new challenges to the central tenets of his argument. This paper/presentation will discuss how students at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, an American Jesuit university located in a conservative, Muslim Wahhabi country in the Gulf, have interpreted and challenged his theories. It also seeks to analyze how the experience of teaching at an American branch campus in Qatar can complicate our own assumptions about religious belief, cultural difference, the notion of academic freedom under “illiberal” governments, and the very concept of what a “Western liberal arts education” has come to represent.