The Fletcher School

Amal Jadou looks and sounds like a typical Fletcher student. At 30, she is a brainy, idealistic, politically-motivated woman who has big dreams to match her big brown eyes. Indeed, a Boston Globe feature writer working on a profile of her calls her "captivating."

In addition to her doctoral studies, she often speaks at local schools, churches and civic schools about current events, especially in the Middle East. She can't wait to finish her Ph.D. so she can go home to teach, then eventually run for political office.

But what makes Amal's story unusual is that she happens to be a Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp. The issues she learns about at Fletcher are not only of political interest to her, but also resonate personally. She knows what it's like to have only limited freedom and to live in fear. She knows first-hand about discrimination, stereotyping and war.

In an interview, she recalled how at 13, while on her way to school, an Israeli settler put a gun to her head. "He decided not to kill me; I still don't know why," she says softly. She knows what it's like to be harassed by soldiers at checkpoints. "Hey, you married? You want to stay with me tonight?," were the kinds of jabs with which she had to contend.

But even at an early age, Amal began to distinguish herself. She was the first Palestinian woman to appear on the first Palestinian TV show to read the news and present a political program. After a few months, the Israeli occupation force closed down the TV station for security reasons. The station was reopened in 1997, with Amal resuming her on-air work interviewing ambassadors, presidents, and prime ministers from all over the world.

Amal continued to stand out, venturing more into political and social activism. "[I] served in several NGOs that work on refugee issues as well as on women and children issues. I was elected to many political and social bodies in Palestine which gave me credibility within my society. My work to establish centers for the disabled, to support children in the Bethlehem area taught me the importance of being transparent…. Additionally, I was elected to represent Palestinian social, political and academic institutions in conferences and meetings all over the world," she says.

Receiving a B.A. degree in English from Bethlehem University in 1995, she received her Master's in International Relations from Bir Zeit University in 2001 and was admitted to The Fletcher School as a Ph.D. student the same year.

Recently, Amal became one of three people [the only one from the United States] to receive to receive a prestigious prize for academic excellence and leadership potential The prize is part of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF) Program, launched in 1987 by the Nippon Foundation.

Indeed, The Fletcher School was the first of what are now 66 universities and consortia in 44 countries around the world to have each received US $1 million from SYLFF Program. Yale, Princeton, Michigan and the University at California at Berkeley are among the participating universities in this country, not to mention institutions abroad in Africa, Europe, China, Indonesia, Egypt and Israel.

The award-winning essay Amal submitted with her application reveals much about her character. It also demonstrates her transformation from an angry victim to a hopeful, high-spirited graduate student, anxious to return to her country to work for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In her essay, Amal expressed mixed feelings about growing up in a refugee camp, with which she is still struggling. "I love the camp so dearly because it is part of Palestine and because of the warmth of its people," wrote, adding, "Aida’s 3,500 inhabitants who come from 19 villages that were destroyed by Israelis in 1948 are my extended family. We have shared joy, laughs, tears, pain, sorrow, success, food, poverty, humiliation, oppression, defiance and persistence."

At the same time, the camp continues to remain a symbol of her people's oppression. "It is the symbol of our uprooting from our original homes and villages and our dispersing all over the world. It is the symbol of our lack of stability and of our non-normal existence, where we are not citizens of a state but an occupied community of refugees," she said.

As a teenager, she was determined, even defiant. "I took part in demonstrations, threw stones at soldiers, sewed Palestinian flags without my parents’ knowledge and raised them with my brothers on electricity poles in defiance of Israeli soldiers who prohibited us from having our own flag. What devastated me the most during the Intifada was the Israeli closure of the schools for long periods," she wrote.

Amal's perception of Israelis -- indeed, her vision of the world -- broadened in the 1990s, particularly around the time of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by the Israelis and Palestinians on the White House lawn. "Through my friendship with an Israeli Jewish lawyer who worked for Palestinian political prisoners, and through meetings with Israelis in various capacities, I was able to see that there were Israelis who abhorred occupation as much as I did," she wrote.

A turning point for Amal came in 2001 when the current Intifada and fallout of the peace process triggered Amal's decision to come to The Fletcher School. In her essay, she wrote:

"Holed up in the staircase of my house in Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem while Israeli tanks and Apache helicopters shelled the town, and in the midst of the high roaring of explosions came from the background a frail voice of a news broadcaster reporting an American official to say, 'We have tried all means possible to resolve the Middle East conflict but we failed.' This was on Jan. 9, 2001, just few days before President Clinton would leave office. That comment hit me strongly and planted the seed of my dissertation research, for it made me wonder whether they had really tried enough and whether they were paying enough attention to what was going on the ground during the years of the Oslo process. And if they tried enough, what led to the failure?"

Her political interests mesh nicely with the Fletcher experience. "I have always felt the need to study outside Palestine, especially in the United States because of the important role the United States plays and the impact of its policies on the region as well as its involvement in the peace process. Because of my future plans to be involved in politics, I felt the need to be exposed to the American experience and American policy making," she wrote.

Not surprisingly, Amal's doctoral research involves analyzing the peace process to identify what went wrong and devise policy recommendations for the United States to become more involved in jump-starting the peace process.

A clue to her promising future may be found in her name. "My name 'Amal' means 'hope' in Arabic," she says.