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While Susan Akram studied the plight of Palestinian
refugees, her daughter, Shireen Akram-Boshar, attended
school in Jerusalem. They are pictured at the Dome of
the Rock.
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In the Palestinian town of Abu Deis, near the sprawling Israeli
settlements of the West Bank, just going through the motions of
everyday life is a challenge. There are checkpoints to cross,
visas to scramble for, power outages to slow you down. And just
below the surface, a few thousand years of hostilities are always
bubbling, threatening to erupt into skirmishes large and small.
Susan Akram navigated this world, making the daily trek between
Abu Deis and Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem in her effort
to understand-and help resolve-the problems of Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians, Akram explains, are excluded from protections offered
to other refugees, mostly because international law originally
intended to protect them has been widely misinterpreted. "The
protections backfired," says Akram. "That's why, after
52 years, there are still Palestinian refugee camps."
She spent the first half of her Fulbright year going straight
to the people involved-administrators of refugee camps, international
advocacy groups, the Palestinian legislative council, even the
PLO. But even more important, she insists, was meeting with the
refugees themselves. "The most wonderful thing about the
Fulbright," she says, "was that it gave me a chance
to do talks and workshops and discussions in refugee camps, to
raise the issues and start to build some momentum-that was the
most thrilling part of the entire process."
Akram, a professor at Boston University School of Law, headed
back to the classroom for the second half of her year, to teach
graduate courses in comparative refugee law at the Palestine School
of Law. "It was extremely exciting to be able to share what
I'd just been learning with students," she recalls. Under
her direction, they worked up simulated cases, made refugee claims
at various international levels, and presented oral arguments
before faculty and guests. "It was something they'd never
done before," she says. "They'd had no opportunities
for clinical education, and they were thrilled about the experience."
For Akram, the small frustrations of a year in the Middle East
fade as she considers the big accomplishments. She watched her
six-year-old daughter's transformation into a "citizen of
the world," and she furthered the refugee advocacy that's
been her labor of love for twenty years. "It was an incredible
year in so many ways," she recalls. "The chance to live
and really experience what life is like for the Palestinians gave
me an appreciation for them as a people. They're incredible survivors."
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