<\/a><\/p>\n By Lisa Gregoire Last July, Zahraa Al-Ahmad was in Beirut, Lebanon, ready to begin a research project focusing on the educational and employment barriers faced by Syrian refugees in that small country pinched between Syria and Israel on the Mediterranean Sea. But after several weeks abroad, she was still facing her own barriers \u2014 logistical and bureaucratic delays that prevented her and a Lebanese colleague from conducting interviews with refugees. So she sat, spinning her wheels, frustrated and worried that she was squandering a precious opportunity to better understand, and possibly even improve, the experience of several hundred thousand Syrians in Lebanon.<\/p>\n If you think those wheels spun for long, you don\u2019t know this woman.<\/p>\n Al-Ahmad, a Syrian-born political science<\/a> graduate student at Carleton, is one of the first student researchers with the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network<\/a> (LERRN), a seven-year Canadian initiative which helps partner universities in Lebanon, Jordan, Tanzania and Kenya conduct homegrown research projects that are relevant and meaningful to them. Al-Ahmad is, by her own admission, a shy and introverted 23-year-old who makes a mean lasagna and prefers board games with friends to late-night parties. But here\u2019s what others notice: intelligence, confidence, resourcefulness and quiet tenacity, all of which come in handy when trying to work in a foreign country \u2014 especially a complicated place like Lebanon.<\/p>\n Syria and Lebanon have a contentious history. Lebanon\u2019s 15-year civil war, which started in 1976, led to significant Syrian intervention that lasted until 2006. After that, Lebanon tried hard to rebuild from chaos within a region dogged by perennial conflict. Then, in 2011, Syria deteriorated into civil war itself, sending its citizens fleeing, many into Lebanon.<\/p>\n Census data are imprecise but it\u2019s estimated that about one in three people in Lebanon is a refugee, predominantly Syrian and Palestinian. Lebanon\u2019s estimated population of 6.1 million people includes roughly 1.5 million Syrians and 500,000 Palestinians, which means that Lebanon is home to the highest per capita refugee population in the world. Many educated Lebanese can\u2019t find jobs and resent newcomers. With no official refugee camps, Syrians face a precarious legal status and fickle restrictions on where they can live and which jobs they can do.<\/p>\n Despite project setbacks, Al-Ahmad was still hoping to find out why Syrian refugees weren\u2019t going to school or getting jobs. So after conferring with LERRN project director James Milner<\/a>, a political science professor at Carleton, Al-Ahmad switched gears halfway through her six-week trip, made a list of relevant non-governmental agencies (NGOs) and put her first language \u2014 Arabic \u2014 to use.<\/p>\n She tracked down busy NGO staffers, charmed her way into last-minute interviews and took Ubers across the city to streets with no addresses and only vague instructions: it\u2019s across from the market; text me when you arrive and I\u2019ll come find you<\/em>. The work was stressful and tiring but also relevant and fulfilling. And it was better than spinning her wheels. \u201cThere was a learning curve, but honestly, it was a great experience and I\u2019m so thankful for it,\u201d Al-Ahmad says over tea on the Carleton campus.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot of work and a lot of pressure, but I wanted to get the most I could out of my trip.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Before flying home, she presented her findings to the LERRN team in Lebanon, including suggestions regarding structure, logistics and limitations to help streamline future research in the region \u2014 paying it forward for her colleagues there and back home in Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div> That\u2019s the kind of flexibility and professionalism LERRN needs in its student participants, says Milner, who praises Al-Ahmad for her grace under pressure. \u201cThese trans-national research partnerships, working across context and capacities, they\u2019re wonderful when they go well, but they\u2019re really tested when we encounter these kinds of challenges,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s where the trust and dialogue that we create help us problem solve and find ways toward positive outcomes. I felt so fortunate that Zahraa was there because of her ability to do those things.\u201d<\/p>\n Al-Ahmad\u2019s ability to overcome challenges and accomplish something worthwhile is second nature for a girl who grew up in a new Canadian family. She moved to Toronto from the thriving port city of Latakia, Syria, with her parents and two older brothers in 2005 when she was eight. They lived briefly in North York then moved to Etobicoke, watching English TV to learn the language but speaking Arabic to one another. Her father is a civil engineer and her mother, an early childhood educator. Both returned to school in Canada to get re-certified, working day and night at their studies and placements. It was a challenging few years during which her brothers stepped up to help take care of her.<\/p>\n Canada offered myriad opportunities but it was not Syria. Winters were cold and clothing was thick and heavy and, as a child, Al-Ahmad felt like a total outsider. She missed the olive groves of home, the Mediterranean beaches and her many cousins, aunts and uncles, but she saw in her parents a recipe for success: hard work, love and persistence.<\/p>\n The Al-Ahmads were not refugees and their move was supposed to last only until the children had finished school and university. Then their country fell apart and Canada became home. Syria\u2019s civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 civilians and displaced millions of others, has spared coastal Latakia. But the country remains in tatters and more than 25,000 government-sponsored Syrian refugees have come to Canada and thousands of others through private and group sponsorships.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div> Zahraa loved talking politics in her family\u2019s Etobicoke home, but like many loyal children of immigrant parents, she wanted to be a doctor. To that end, she started attending Toronto\u2019s York University as a science undergrad and, for fun, took an arts elective. Then she discovered that one could actually get a degree in a different kind of science: the political kind. She switched majors and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science in 2018.<\/p>\n Thinking that the nation\u2019s capital was a good place to continue studying politics, Al-Ahmad applied to do a master\u2019s degree at Carleton. One of her courses was in the global politics of migration<\/a> with Milner. Most refugees live in the global south, Milner says, but most refugee research is controlled by the developed world, where there is money and influence. LERRN is trying to change that dynamic by offering expertise, funding and capacity. Refugee host countries direct the projects while Canadian researchers act as partners and amplifiers.<\/p>\n When it was time to recruit LERRN\u2019s first cohort of student researchers, Milner thought that Al-Ahmad, with her background, political interests and language skills, would be an ideal fit. He was right. Carleton touts diversity as an asset and that\u2019s not just words, he says. \u201cThere is an untapped strength at Carleton: the backgrounds and the life journeys that students bring with them,\u201d says Milner.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone in the Carleton community has come from a journey and the more we embrace that journey, the more we\u2019ll be able to realize the real social purpose of the university \u2014 to engage in real-world problems, not just in an efficient way, but in a very respectful way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Al-Ahmad expects to earn her master\u2019s in April 2020 and then it\u2019s on to a PhD. At this point she\u2019s considering a focus on security studies. So, her plans of being a doctor might still pan out, just not a medical one. And her parents support that. \u201cI think they knew that no matter what I was studying, I would work hard<\/em>,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not somebody who stands as life goes by. I want to help Syria and Syrians because they\u2019re such a big part of my identity as a proud Syrian-Canadian. That\u2019s why this work is so important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div> As told to David McGuffin<\/p>\n Yaprak Baltacioğlu\u2019s journey toward becoming Carleton\u2019s chancellor in 2019 contains many valuable lessons. Originally from Turkey, Baltacioğlu, in a 29-year career in Canada\u2019s civil service, rose to become the highest- ranking immigrant in the federal government. She spent 15 of those years as a deputy minister at Treasury Board and the Agriculture department, among other appointments, championing efforts that advanced mental health, employee wellness and workplace diversity. The advice she gives new Canadians is to carefully study where the opportunities are. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge commitment to diversity in the federal public service, making sure we represent Canada,\u201d she says. \u201cThe numbers for women and minorities are much higher than in the private sector.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A master\u2019s degree graduate from Carleton\u2019s School of Public Policy and Administration<\/a>, Baltacioğlu was born into a prominent family, the only child of one of Turkey\u2019s top civil rights lawyers and an artist mother. \u201cIt was a tough marriage,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey just couldn\u2019t ever get together.\u201d In a way, this prepared her for the roles she played as a senior public servant: \u201cI have capacity to mediate almost all conflict. I was very well trained in trying to make sure nobody fights.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n My mother was a wonderful artist. She loved animals. She loved people. She was generous. I didn\u2019t know she had depression. In 1980, she killed herself. It\u2019s going to be 40 years and … when I talk about it, it still chokes me up. That was the year I moved. She died in February and we came to Canada in August, which was amazingly good for me. A fresh start is the best thing to do. Just change. Change climate, change culture, change history. Nobody knew me. Nobody knew about me. It was pretty public in Turkey when my mother died. <\/p>\n As an immigrant, if you don\u2019t have Canadian work experience, if you don\u2019t have Canadian credentials, and if you don\u2019t have any contacts, finding a job in any professional area is hard. So I applied to Carleton. That was the beginning. First it gave me the education and the credentials. It gave me the contacts through my professors and classmates who ended up becoming accomplished in public policy. And it also gave me the confidence that I was actually capable. <\/p>\n Coming to Carleton helped me find my first job in the civil service in 1989. I looked for interesting places to work and good people to work for. In the mid-1990s, I became chief of staff to the Deputy Minister of Agriculture just as deep budget cuts were being implemented. Huge subsidy programs like the Western Grain Transportation Act were repealed, and I got to see how a big organization changes shape. Our minister was Ralph Goodale, the MP from Saskatchewan, and those cuts were hard for a western leader to make. I watched everything he did and how he handled challenges, from weighing options to communications to basic survival. That was the best training you can get. <\/p>\n Despite all the support I had from colleagues throughout my career, I didn\u2019t talk about my mother\u2019s suicide because of the stigma. Then, five years ago, I heard that some of my employees who had children with mental health issues were not telling anybody and were trying to take time off to care for their families, and I started thinking, \u201cGod, we\u2019re in the 2000s and we\u2019re still not talking about it?\u201d So I gave a speech about my mother to 600 executives. It\u2019s personal, but it was important that I spoke out because I was a senior person in the federal government. The stigma is not going to go away unless we talk about mental health. <\/p>\n It\u2019s important that Carleton and other universities are so focused on these issues<\/a> today. Carleton has made a major difference to me; if I hadn\u2019t gone to school here, I don\u2019t know what my life would have been. Which is why, when the university asked me to become chancellor, I immediately said yes. You don\u2019t always get to pay back. I\u2019m lucky that I can.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div> As told to David McGuffin<\/p>\n Last summer, <\/em>Stephen Saideman<\/em><\/a>, a professor at Carleton\u2019s <\/em>Norman Paterson School of International Affairs<\/em><\/a>, received a $2.5-million partnership grant from the <\/em>Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council<\/em><\/a> for the <\/em>Canadian Defence and Security Network<\/em><\/a>. Launched in spring 2019, the network brings together more than 30 partners, including government agencies and civil society groups, to address the security challenges facing Canada and figure out how best to address these threats. \u201cWe need to reduce barriers between the academic world, the policy world and the public,\u201d says Saideman, its director, \u201cand there\u2019s support for that in Canada.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A dual Canadian-American citizen originally from Philadelphia, Saideman came to Carleton in 2012 from McGill, where he had started teaching a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That day, he was working as a <\/em>Council on Foreign Relations Fellow<\/em><\/a> with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, focused on rebuilding the Balkans and other post-Cold War international fine-tuning. That focus would change completely for Saideman \u2014 and the world \u2014 by day\u2019s end. <\/em><\/p>\n I was in the Pentagon when the towers in New York got hit. An Air Force colonel came in and told us to turn on our TV. We saw the second plane hit, and it was pretty clear that this wasn\u2019t an accident. Right after that I had a meeting with the State Department about Bosnia. At that point, we could still see planes taking off and landing at National Airport, which is next to the Pentagon. Then, while we were driving on the bridge between Arlington, Virginia, and downtown Washington, D.C., I heard a noise. I turned around and saw smoke behind me \u2014 that was when the plane hit the Pentagon. I got on my cellphone, called my wife and said, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about me.\u201d She said, \u201cWhy should I worry about you? You\u2019re not in New York.\u201d So I told her what happened.<\/p>\n We went back to the Pentagon. It\u2019s an enormous building and the plane had hit the opposite side, so we were able to get back in. But the building was on fire. That day, the United States changed from a place that was trying to be involved in the world in ways that weren\u2019t particularly risky to a country at war.<\/p>\n It was really strange to watch America go to war while teaching in Montreal. There were two distinct wars: the Afghanistan war, which felt like it was pushed upon the U.S., and the Iraq war, which was a war of choice \u2014 a war that was ill-considered both in terms of how it started and how it was implemented. I worked in the Pentagon when it was being run by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, and was pretty skeptical about the ability of his people to do the right thing. It was embarrassing as an American to be living in Canada at a time when the United States was doing something so, so wrong.<\/p>\n I liked the idea of moving to a place like Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, where the main job is to train the next generation of people who will work in government. I felt that I\u2019d have more opportunities at Carleton to teach people who would be going into the policy world. As a scholar of international relations, it\u2019s exciting to be in the national capital. I\u2019ve had the chance to have lots of conversations with colonels and generals, with people up and down the ranks of Global Affairs<\/a>, which has helped us build the new Canadian Defence and Security Network. Canada\u2019s place in the world is shifting and the government is consumed by the day-to-day, but we academics have longer time horizons and can help think beyond tomorrow.<\/p>\n I think what makes Canada special compared to many other countries is how we welcome immigrants. That allows us to have more creativity and more innovation \u2014 and better food \u2014 than other countries. It allows us to be less chained to narrow perspectives, which means we do things better on a whole than other places because we have a broader imagination.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div> As told to David McGuffin<\/p>\n Dana Brown<\/em><\/a>, the new dean of Carleton\u2019s <\/em>Sprott School of Business<\/em><\/a>, has spent much of her career navigating uncertainty. That\u2019s where she\u2019s most comfortable. \u201cI don\u2019t need to have the answer,\u201d she says, \u201cand I think it\u2019s good to experiment, to try things and see whether they work.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Born and raised in the U.S. and a longtime resident of the U.K., Brown arrived in Ottawa last summer with her husband and three children and an impressive track record: director of the University of Oxford\u2019s MBA program; dean of Business and Law at De Montfort University in Leicester, England; a professorship at the EMLYON Business School in France and a visiting lecturer at the American University in Cairo. But her trajectory in academia and business hasn\u2019t followed a traditional route. She earned a master\u2019s in Eastern European Studies at Oxford and a PhD in Political Science at MIT in Boston, and was one of the first few dozen employees hired by Jeff Bezos at Amazon, none of whom had a background in business or retail. <\/em><\/p>\n At Amazon, we were a bunch of young people who knew very little about business, trying to figure out how to make this new thing work, and I think that was part of Jeff \u2019s strategy. He wanted to build something different and he didn\u2019t want preconceived ideas about how things were done or what was possible.<\/p>\n I think my fascination with change in business goes back even earlier, however, to when I was an undergraduate political science student at Rutgers in New Jersey and spent a year abroad in Moscow. My time there coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communist-era economic planning. It was like a Wild West market in Russia. Nobody knew who was calling the shots. Price reforms and subsidies had been in place but were stopping. Rents and heating costs were spiking, and people were losing their economic foundations. People were on the streets selling everything they owned, even their toothbrushes.<\/p>\n Later, I got a job in Moscow with an American construction firm that was building a development in the centre of the city. They had hired Russian construction workers and brought in materials from Europe. My job was to manage the inventory because workers were constantly taking toilet seats home. There were no toilet seats left \u2014 Russians typically didn\u2019t have access to such things \u2014 and workers were walking off the site with everything. My job was to basically manage this process, and people were not happy when I told them they couldn\u2019t leave with toilet seats.<\/p>\n My experience in Russia and Eastern Europe really made me think about how to conscientiously build a capitalism that works for people. That led to my first job as a professor at Oxford. I was asked to come to the business school by the dean, who wanted to find a way of teaching future businesspeople to think differently about economic development and investment \u2014 to think about an approach that wasn\u2019t just about exploitation of the environment and low-cost labour and taking advantage of weak regulations. The status quo is basically a stripping of assets, which is where we are today, in my view.<\/p>\n I was interested in Carleton because I like to go places where there\u2019s an opportunity to really build something. Carleton is in this mode and is thinking about its footprint and impact. That attracted me to this new role. When the job offer came, I had a teenager and we were established in England. It\u2019s where our kids had grown up, and we had Europe at our fingertips. The idea of moving to Canada was a bit scary for everybody. But Brexit kind of pulled the rug out from under us. If you\u2019re raising a family and thinking about future opportunities, Canada is a good place to be. I want to know what\u2019s going on in the world, to have an impact and be engaged in meaningful work. But I don\u2019t want my kids to be worried all the time. So Canada and Carleton made sense.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div> A Novelist Finally Finds the Right Words The first time I discovered that I could travel without my body moving was during a government-imposed state of emergency in my quiet South African township in the late 1980s. Night was falling and so were bullets, outside and all around us. We were forbidden from leaving our homes and I was in my small bedroom with my two younger sisters and three visiting friends who could not leave because they had stayed out past curfew. We were listening to bootleg tapes of rap music that was so defiant I knew it had to be illegal.<\/p>\n I want to say it was the rhythm of the song coming from the small tape player that moved me, but really, it was the lyrics, the way they transported me from the confines of that room to another land. In my mind I travelled to and lived, briefly, in a place that felt like freedom. I knew then that I wouldn\u2019t spend my adult years in the country where I was born.<\/p>\n People always ask: Where is home?<\/em> It\u2019s such a heavy question. Whenever I\u2019m asked, I fumble my way through an answer and come away thinking that I sound terribly inarticulate. But the truth is that it has taken me a couple decades to come to what feels like the right response.<\/p>\n I am a professional storyteller, a novelist. I believe it is my ability to travel to other worlds that has held me together through the very long process of settling in Canada and becoming comfortable with a language so far removed from my mother tongue. From the very beginning of arriving here in 1997, I sought solace in writing. I found these words in a collection of stories I wrote in my first few months in this country:<\/p>\n You can put all your life together for free at this place they call a community centre: there are posters offering everything from pottery classes to anonymous meetings for alcoholics to cleaning jobs. Twenty dollars to clean someone\u2019s house. So much more money than I have. Seems simple enough. I think it can be done. I\u2019m feeling that now-elusive thing called hope that seems to duck in and out of me once every few weeks, teasing me with brief glimpses of something new and better. <\/em><\/p>\n Cold, a confusing language and a baffling new culture were what I was living, yet even then I was travelling to a brighter future. It helped that, right after gaining permanent resident status, I got a job working with refugees in newcomer centres. In their eyes I saw hope and resilience amid the challenge and pain of adapting to somewhere new. I also saw this hope and resilience \u2014 an insistence on belonging \u2014 in the stories I heard when I later worked for the United Nations Association in Canada<\/a> and travelled around the country to teach young people about the Charter of Rights of Freedoms<\/a> and learn about their concerns.<\/p>\n Immigration is an act of hope. It requires the ability to go somewhere better before something better comes along. Today, when I am asked, \u201cWhere is home?\u201d I think it is where people are willing to offer the promise of change.<\/p>\n At Carleton, I\u2019ve been able and allowed to carve out space for myself within the university community, on my own terms. Today, when I travel to distant worlds, it is not with the anguish I felt that evening as a child in that room in South Africa. It is with pleasure, because for the first time, I feel anchored. When you immigrate, you are always searching. Then you discover that feeling welcome and safe is home.<\/p>\n Kagiso Lesego Molope<\/em><\/a> is a master\u2019s student in <\/em>Film Studies<\/em><\/a> at Carleton and the author of four novels, including <\/em>This Book Betrays My Brother<\/a>, which won the <\/em>2019 Ottawa Book Award for English fiction<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div> A Photographer Turned PhD Student Looks at the World Through a New Lens<\/p>\n Words and pictures by Akintunde Akinleye It was his mother\u2019s idea. <\/em>Akintunde Akinleye<\/em><\/a> didn\u2019t plan to become a photographer. <\/em><\/p>\n Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, when he wasn\u2019t at school, he played football on the streets with friends. At age 11, to provide direction and discipline, his mother got him a camera and an apprenticeship at a nearby studio. Later, at university, he realized he could make money by selling pictures \u2014 an important consideration for a student from a middle-class family in a country going through a tumultuous period of \u201cstructural adjustment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That experience led to nearly 20 years of work as a photojournalist, during which he travelled throughout Nigeria and other African nations, documenting the continent\u2019s conflicts, religious rituals and everyday moments, getting beat up and shot at, and winning the prestigious<\/em> World Press Photo prize in 2007<\/em><\/a> for an image of a man rinsing soot from his face after a deadly pipeline explosion.<\/em><\/p>\n His images, including pictures documenting the human and environmental impact of oil production in the Niger Delta, have been published around the world and have been featured in several international exhibitions \u2014 \u201cimages that shock but also possess a formal beauty,\u201d writes gallery director Oliver Enwonwu, with \u201can honesty of purpose clearly evident.\u201d But despite that success, and a well-paying job with Reuters, Akinleye had always dreamed of becoming a teacher.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nDiversity Matters<\/h2>\n
\nPhotos by R\u00e9mi Th\u00e9riault<\/p>\n![\"Zahraa](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-2.jpg\")
<\/div>Diversity and Positive Change<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-11.jpg\")
<\/div>The Pull of Politics<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"Chancellor](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-3.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nChancellor Yaprak Baltaciog\u0306lu\u2019s Fresh Start<\/h2>\n
![\"Security](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-4.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nSecurity Scholar Stephen Saideman Thinks Beyond Tomorrow<\/h2>\n
![\"Sprott](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-5.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nBusiness Dean Dana Brown\u2019s Conscientious Capitalism<\/h2>\n
![\"Novelist](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-6.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nHome<\/h2>\n
By Kagiso Lesego Molope<\/p>\n![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-7.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nShifting Perspectives<\/h2>\n
As told to Dan Rubinstein<\/p>\n![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-8.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/from-away-1200w-9.jpg\")
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