It was summer 2014 and a group of CSSH students were in Jordan on a Dialogue of Civilizations program. The students were working to bring some semblance of relief to the lives of Syrian refugees in the country, hundreds of thousands of whom had fled their war-torn homeland.
It was summer 2014 and a group of Northeastern University students were in Jordan on a Dialogue of Civilizations program. The students were working to bring some semblance of relief to the lives of Syrian refugees in the country, hundreds of thousands of whom had fled their war-torn homeland. As part of the faculty-led study abroad program, the young humanitarians had traveled from the country’s capital of Amman to Mafraq, a city located just six miles west of the Zaatari refugee camp, and now they were painting a school, planting a garden, playing soccer with some kids.
“We did what we could at the time,” political science professor Denis Sullivan recalled, “and students got an up-close and personal look at the crisis.” But Sullivan, who was leading the dialogue, was not satisfied, knowing that much more could be done to transform the lives of the displaced. He had led a dialogue to Jordan in each of the past three years, watching closely as more and more refugees flooded into the country. And now he was motivated to tackle the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, a crisis that has claimed some 4.6 million victims.
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