Teleconference with Iranian Students
Nov 6th, 2008 by daliah.singer
On November 4, our class participated in a teleconference with students at Tehran University in Iran. It focused on the 2008 election (which had not been decided at the time) and foreign policy relations between the U.S. and Iran.
I thought it was an extremely valuable experience for the class because we got the chance to hear what students in another country were curious about and also hear some of their own opinions.
The most valuable piece of information or advice that I got from the conversation was that as students living the U.S. - and particularly as media students - we need to make sure that we are not just reading or listening to news for this country. If we really want to know what’s going on, we need to read, analyze and compare the news we receive with news from the country it’s about. I can speak for myself in saying that I barely have enough time to go online and read just the Denver Post website or The New York Times, which is why I don’t seek out those other news sources. But the conversation yesterday made me realize that I really should, especially when I’m reading about a topic I’m really not familiar with or one that has a controversial aspect.
The most interesting comment I heard during the teleconference was from a woman who was saying that she didn’t fully support President Ahmadinejad because she felt that since he was an academic he should be more open to different ideas and more interested in solving the social dilemmas of Iran than he is. To be honest, I don’t know much about Ahmadinejad and his policies - another factor of listening solely to U.S. news, I think - but the woman’s comments seemed very intelligent and thoughtful, and I really appreciated that she was willing to share it with us.
In my mind, it brought up ideas of how similar all of us around the world are. We all question the people who lead us, from our parents to our professors and presidents/prime ministers. We all have opinions on what issues need to be solved first, what needs to be put on the top of the agenda. It’s not just in the U.S. that there is a distrust or an uncertainty about government. In Iran, too, where people are not as free to speak out as we are here, there are those who disagree with aspects of the government. Although it is based on perhaps a negative feeling, it is nice to feel that the students we spoke to in Iran and us have at least one big thing in common.