As a University student studying in Amman, Jordan, Thomas Hojem had grown accustomed to loud explosions.
Almost every night in Amman, fireworks punctuate local weddings. So when Hojem heard an explosion on Nov. 10, he assumed it was the sound of celebration.
It was not.
The sound Hojem heard was a bomb exploding outside a Days Inn hotel, about a quarter of a mile away from his residence.
The attack on the hotel was one of three coinciding suicide bombings in Amman that killed 57 people, according to The New York Times.
For everyone, and particularly students like Hojem who are involved with study abroad programs in the Middle East, the bombings provided a grisly reminder of the dangerous political realities that exist in the region.
Yet evidence compiled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 suggests that frequent media images of violence have not deterred students from studying in the Middle East.
According to data compiled by the Institute of International Education and the National Security Education Program, applications to IIE study abroad programs in the Near East and South Asia increased by 32 percent in the two years immediately following Sept. 11, 2001.
That information confirms the anecdotal findings of Caroline Vanderkar, associate director of Overseas Study Programs at the University, who has noticed an uptick in University students interested in traveling to the Middle East.
The University is mindful that problems can arise for students overseas and has taken measures to ensure the safety of students who travel abroad.
In order to decrease the risk of negative incidents occurring while traveling in foreign countries, students who enter a University-affiliated study abroad program are provided opportunities to prepare themselves before traveling to their destination countries.
Students participate in a general orientation program, which applies to all countries. They then attend a second, regional-specific orientation program.
Additionally, students are given information from the U.S. Department of State about the country they plan to visit.
The University is also careful to make sure students traveling abroad will not cause behavioral incidents in a foreign country.
Before a student is accepted to a study abroad program, he or she must sign a clearance form, authorizing the Office of International Programs to check his or her record with the Office of Student Judicial Affairs for any serious violations.
“We want to have good representatives of the U of O, of our country, and we want to send students abroad for academic reasons, students who want to learn,” Vanderkar said.
The University frequently evaluates study abroad programs to make sure they are safe for students. Programs to Israel and Indonesia have been suspended because of safety concerns, Vanderkar said.
“Our office and our partners take the safety and security of our students as number one. It’s a primary concern,” Vanderkar said. “Should anything happen, we monitor the situation so we are providing the best information that we can to our students, and then if need be, temporarily suspend the program.”
When Hojem decided to travel to Amman, he encountered skepticism and concern from friends and family members.
“The most common reaction I received when I told people that I would be studying in an Arab country was something along the lines of ‘Why would you want to study over there? Aren’t you afraid?’” Hojem said in an e-mail.
Hojem said perceptions of the Middle East as a place riddled with violence are inaccurate, even after the bombings.
“People mistake the Mideast as full of backwards and bloodthirsty Arabs, when the reality is quite different,” Hojem wrote in the e-mail. “The fact is, and I think most of my fellow American students would feel the same, that my idea of the Middle East as formed by American media was way off. People there are normal, friendly people with a different culture and religion.”
Before traveling to Jordan, Hojem worried that people there would dislike him because he is American. While he said he has encountered some resentment on the part of Jordanians, he has not experienced any major incidents of anti-Americanism.
“Most Jordanians are thankfully able to separate American citizens from the actions of their government,” he wrote.

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