When Foreign Study Conflicts With Student Safety

Chelsea Friauf-Evans spent part of last summer the way Duke thinks its students should: She worked with HIV/AIDS patients in Kenya. There was, however, one problem with the project: The U.S. Department of State didn't want her there.

Kenya is on the state department's travel warning list of countries that it recommends Americans not visit, either because of terrorist activity, prolonged armed conflict or a lack of infrastructure that would hinder the department from assisting American citizens.

Friauf-Evans' trip, and others like it, creates a dilemma for Duke administrators, faculty and students: How can the university balance its goal of providing undergraduate students with more international study opportunities with its responsibility to keep them safe? A discussion started this spring is looking to fill in a gap in university rules covering student foreign study.

For students in Duke's Study Abroad program, the policy is clear: Duke does not operate Study Abroad programs in countries on the State Department list. Students can participate in other institutions' programs in these countries if they and their parents sign a waiver indicating they are aware of the state department warning and are traveling in spite of Duke's recommendations.

But there is no policy covering undergraduate students who have made their own arrangements for foreign study or who accompany Duke faculty members on such trips. This is an increasingly popular option, said Trinity College Dean Robert Thompson.

"This is a complicated issue," Thompson said. "We believe our Study Abroad program policy is fundamentally sound. The question is what to do with other programs and individual travel? Do we need to be internally consistent, with one policy for all? Or can we come up with something in between that would provide different rules for the different circumstances under which students travel abroad?

"On one hand, there's a lot of interesting research being done in these countries (on the state department list), and we don't want to cut students off from that. Promoting this kind of student research is one of our priorities. On the other hand, the safety of our students is a paramount concern, and we need to ensure that everyone is thinking about security and has made appropriate preparations."

This spring, Thompson sought the advice of the university's International Affairs Committee, chaired by vice provost Gil Merkx, on the issue. One proposal would treat undergraduate independent foreign research and travel under the same rules as the Study Abroad program.

Several faculty members raised concern about these restrictions, and Thompson agreed to hold off on implementing any new policy. "Right now, we're at the point that we're having a discussion on the topic," he said. "Once we figure out some consensus, we'll submit another proposal."

Some programs, such as the Hart Leadership Program and Scholarship with a Civic Mission, recently created their own policies prohibiting student projects in countries on the list. Alma Blount, director of the Hart Program, said she was following the draft policy guidelines but would end up following any guidelines the university set.

The travel warnings <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.html> are issued when the state department recommends that Americans avoid certain countries. Most of the countries on the list are in the developing world and are sites of internal conflict, such as Sudan, or sites of recent terrorist activity, such as Kenya.

The most controversial country on the list is Israel. Duke does not operate a Study Abroad program there. Margaret Riley, Study Abroad director, said students can participate in Israeli programs currently on the Duke-approved Study Abroad list. These include Ben Gurion University, Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. Duke students can receive transfer credit toward their Duke degrees from these programs if they and their parents sign the required waiver.

Some faculty members question whether the list is the appropriate arbitrator of security. Biology professor Sherryl Broverman, who regularly takes undergraduate students to Kenya to study social forces affecting HIV, says the list is politically biased.

"I don't think the list is well constructed," Broverman said. "It's a political decision who gets placed on it. Most of the countries are in the developing world and don't have strong economic or political ties with us. Spain has had the two most recent terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda, but it isn't on the state department list.

"In Kenya there was an episode of terrorism two years ago on the coast, 12 hours from where I work, that targeted Israelis and that incident put Kenya back on the list. There is in general very little anti-American sentiment in Kenya except on the coast, and if one takes appropriate precautions being in a car accident is a much greater risk. I've also talked to the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, which indicated that most universities still run their programs in Kenya and just asked us to register when we would be in the country."

But Thompson said the state department list is the best guide the university has.

"We are not going to be able to send out a team and make our own assessment," he said. "The problem is if the state department makes a recommendation that Americans shouldn't go to a country, and we ignore it and send a student there, if something happens to the student, then it would be difficult to defend why we ignored the warning. And when problems occur, the assistance of the state department is essential. Part of the warning is its appraisal that if problems occur, it's not going to be able to help us."

Before her trip to Kenya, Friauf-Evans said she studied security issues. She talked to several Kenyans and concluded that the state department has overstated the threat level.

"I felt very safe during my time there, though I did have to take many more precautions with myself and my conduct than I would have in the United States," she said. "But I think that is a consequence of visiting any developing country. I think that I would have conducted myself in the same way in any developing country whether they were on the travel warning list or not. Since Kenya was on the list for anti-American sentiment and elevated terrorist risk, I did not choose to travel to areas of the country where the anti-American feelings were concentrated."

The travel offered exciting intellectual opportunities, Friauf-Evans said.

"It benefits Duke and its students to cover foreign study in those countries," Friauf-Evans said. "To take away a country such as Kenya for potential travel is taking away the opportunity for an immense amount of education and experience that cannot be found in other places of the world."

Broverman added that with the increase in international students attending Duke, a restrictive policy could lead to some unusual policy decisions. She said she knew of one undergraduate from Zimbabwe who wanted to do a research project while at home on break but was denied funding because her country was on the state department list.

"This spring we had this much praised movie 'Mechina' by senior Maital Guttman about her hometown friends in Israel who are about to enter the military," Broverman said. "She was a Robertson Scholar and was able to get some assistance from them, but she would have had a difficult time getting funding from Duke sources because she did the project while visiting relatives in Israel."

One possibility is to require students to travel with established organizations knowledgeable about security issues in the country. Blount said that's the approach the Hart program uses.

"As a rule of thumb, Hart students are not tourists," Blount said. "They are embedded with organizations that we trust and we have a relationship with. The people in these sponsoring programs are trained. They serve as mentors to the students, and they take security issues seriously."

Thompson said one thing that pleases him is that the discussion has raised awareness of the issue on campus. The discussion has also publicized other lesser-known issues of importance to students, such as the need to get international ID cards and to be covered by insurance, he added.

"The conversation is articulating a deeply held value at the university: the ability of students to do international study," Thompson said.

"One of the positive things of the International Affairs meeting was the wide recognition of the issue," he added. "People are thinking about it. It may be that we already are where we need to be. We may not need a new policy. But if that is true, I want to end up there after we have talked about it and reached a consensus."