The University of Maryland’s honors college, in partnership with the American University of Afghanistan, will reinstate a course for spring 2017 after the class was canceled this semester due to a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.
The fall course — HONR376Q: Islamic Radicalization Drivers of Youth in the United States and Afghanistan — was canceled after a suicide car bombing breached security walls and two terrorists attacked the AUAF campus with explosives and automatic weapons on Aug. 24, leaving 13 people dead, according to a September Diamondback article.
Although the course, which has been renamed as HONR378Q: Radicalization within Islam: 21st Century Drivers, Challenges and Policy Choices, will return in the spring, students will not be able to converse with AUAF students, said Susan Dwyer, Honor’s College executive director.
Students will still be able to communicate with the course instructor, Omar Samad, former Afghan ambassador to France and Canada, via the internet, Dwyer said.
Although the honors college would like to continue its global classroom experience, which allows students to communicate with peers overseas, Dwyer said it’s too soon after the incident.
“We are not going to run it as a global classroom using the technology that we have used in the past because the American University of Afghanistan is still recovering after the attack they experienced this fall,” she said. “That doesn’t mean to say that the students won’t have the opportunity to work with Mr. Samad and learn from someone with such deep experience.”
However, if this class does become a global classroom, it would be the second class at this university to do so. The first class to offer a global classroom experience was HONR269T: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy toward Afghanistan, she added.
