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Akbar
Ahmed named D.C.’s Professor of the Year
Photo by Jeff
Watts
Akbar
Ahmed
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BY
SALLY ACHARYA
Akbar
Ahmed has another achievement to add to his long list, and it’s
one that won’t come as a surprise to his students: Professor
of the Year for the District of Columbia.
The
2004 teaching award is the latest of many achievements for the professor
of international relations, who has been described by the BBC as
“the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam”
and by Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury as “one of the
most important scholars of Islam today.”
The
annual honor was awarded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education
(CASE). The award, according to CASE, salutes professors who excel
as teachers and influence the lives and careers of their students.
“I’m
a tough old-fashioned schoolteacher who likes to move his class
at a brisk pace,” Ahmed says of his teaching philosophy. He
is also a diplomat, a scholar, a filmmaker, and an activist on interfaith
dialogue who carries his message from university campuses to TV’s
Oprah.
As
Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at AU, he teaches such courses
as The World of Islam to packed rooms of students curious to learn
about his timely and controversial subject.
“The
teaching of Islam today in the U.S. is of the utmost importance.
It is also a great challenge,” says Ahmed, who moved to his
AU teaching post from Princeton only days before Sept. 11, 2001.
It’s
a subject he knows will touch students’ lives in many ways,
whether they’re in such popular AU majors as international
relations or journalism, or simply turning on the evening news or
chatting with friends.
And
it’s not a subject he prefers to approach through one-sided
lectures. Recognizing that many students have thoughts and opinions
they may not necessarily want to raise publicly, Ahmed’s strategy
is to break his class into randomly selected groups to debate such
controversial questions as whether Islam oppresses women. He tells
his students that, as “scholars of Islam,” they have a
responsibility to back up any statements they make with evidence.
“He’s challenging but encouraging at the same time. You
feel pushed, but you don’t feel intimidated,” says Farah
Tayfour ’06, who took the class in part because she knows little
about the Muslim part of her heritage.
The
World of Islam is a crowded class for AU, with nearly 70 students,
but it’s not a class where students can easily fade into the
background. Any student may be called on at any time to come to
the front of the class and provide, say, the five main bullet points
they’d give to the president about Middle Eastern affairs if
they were secretary of state. “It forces them to think,”
Ahmed says.
His
role as Pakistan’s ambassador to Great Britain brought him
into contact with some of the world’s most influential people,
and he shares those contacts generously with his AU students, who
regularly meet ambassadors and other policy makers who come as guest
speakers to his classes.
Another
of Ahmed’s strategies to engage students is to let them know
that, whenever a dignitary comes to the class, one of the students
will be chosen randomly after the talk to summarize the lecture
and deliver the formal thank you.
“It does two things,” he says. “It makes every student
alert, and it gives them confidence.”
The
confidence and attentiveness of his students has earned favorable
notice from many of his prominent speakers, including Tunisian ambassador
Hatem Atallah, who has visited the class on several occasions.
“He
has a very engaging group of students,” Atallah says. “Every
time I got to see them, they’re very challenging and very open.
You feel they have very inquisitive minds. They are looking through
all the stereotypes and trying to go through to the core issues.”
Ahmed
has engaged in public dialogues across the United States and in
Britain with Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl, as part of his commitment to interfaith dialogue.
Such dialogues are necessary, he says, to dispel misconceptions
about Islam and to counter the notion that Western society and Islam
are on an inevitable collision course.
“I
cannot tell you how important your voice is right now,” Jonathan
Sacks, chief rabbi of the United States, wrote him after one such
dialogue, “These are fateful times—and in you, classic
Islam has a spokesman and role model of supreme grace and dignity.”
The
Professor of the Year award recognizes faculty for their scholarship,
dedication to undergraduate teaching, and community impact. Ahmed
has made a difference in all those areas. Says Atallah, “He
has truly made an extraordinary impact in this town and beyond.”
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