Washington Square News | September 21, 2006

The media and Bush administration have widened the rift between the Middle East and the U.S. in the post-Sept. 11 world, three panelists said at a town hall meeting yesterday at the Rosenthal Pavilion.

Gillian Sorensen senior advisor and national advocate to the United Nations Foundation and former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations spoke alongside Seth Green, founder and president of Americans for Informed Democracy, and James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute. They discussed the change in the U.S.’ world relations after Sept. 11, where we currently stand and solutions to improve relations with the Arab world.

The town hall meeting, titled “The United States’ Relations with the World Post 9/11,” was organized by Informed Democracy at NYU, a campus chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy. The organization is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that aims to achieve the “principle of collaborative policy through better informed democracy.”

Americans for Informed Democracy was founded in 2002 by Americans studying abroad at the University of Oxford in England before it spread to more than 500 university campuses. It organizes projects that focus on diverse aspects of the U.S.’ role in the world, through programs such as its hallmark initiative on U.S.-Muslim world relations called Hope Not Hate, of which this town hall meeting was a part.

All three panelists pointed to the media’s biased reporting and an administration that acts against what it claims causes the disconnect between the U.S. and the Arab world.

Sorensen, a former head of the Office of External Relations for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, began by saying that the U.S. failed to respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks appropriately. Instead, the U.S. waged a war that gained legitimacy through fabricated evidence and had no logistical planning, she said, adding that U.S. efforts at diplomacy are just a pretense since they continue to carry on a war in the Middle East.

She emphasized the need for diplomacy and dialogue.

“We have a chance to engage and elevate the debate with the Muslim world and seek out the moderate voices and amplify,” Sorensen said. “You open that dialogue.”

Green said those in power need to be principled, and identified poor media and leadership as factors in decline of the U.S. image in the Arab world. Since Sept. 11, up to 90 percent of the Arab world sees the U.S. as unfavorable, Green said. “The problem of media over here is they show pictures of terror suspects and over there they show soldiers of Abu Ghraib,” he said. “We have a media and a leadership that have taken our differences and have magnified them.”

Zogby also expressed concern for the severe decline in U.S. relations with the post Sept. 11 world.

“They [the Arab world] love our values and our image but what pulls us back is how we treat people,” Zogby said. “At the end of the day, we’re judged by how we treat people and we have not done well.”

The panelists urged the public to learn and understand the Middle East and the Arab world better. Green told students not to simply follow their leadership, but approach the issues from a different perspective and debate them with the “non-expert public.”

“Get involved in politics and ask questions,” he said. “Hold our media and our leaders to account.”

Zogby urged NYU students to take initiative, explaining that gaining exposure and broadening horizons start simply by getting acquainted with NYU’s Arab community.

“It doesn’t involve traveling to the region or spending extensive time there,” he said. “You have that diversity in this city, on this campus.”

Informed Democracy at NYU was started by Meghna Saxena in 2003 and became an official club in 2004. Listserv membership is composed of 3,200 students, and the group continues to grow. According to the club, they will continue to host events and follow Americans for Informed Democracy’s international conferences.