27/01/2026
After 2.5 years CIEL returned to the Middle East in January with a newly developed Jordan program in partnership with the University of Wyoming.
With 17 students we traveled to Amman, Ajlun, Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, and Madaba and focused on four intersecting pillars: Israel–Palestine, Jordan’s role in navigating regional migration, displacement and political strife, environmental pressures (especially water), and regional security.
Jordan offered a stable base for rigorous learning while staying close to the region’s hardest questions. The program paired high-level institutional briefings with grounded community encounters: meetings with the Palestinian and U.S. embassies and Jordanian parliamentarians, and conversations with civil society actors including EcoPeace, the Jordan River Foundation, and the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, alongside women’s cooperatives and local communities outside the capital. We also brought in additional Israeli and Palestinian voices virtually to keep multiple perspectives in the room.
In reflections, students described less “certainty” and more precision: learning what diplomacy sounds like during conflict, listening across competing narratives, and recognizing how simplified framings fall apart when you sit with people’s lived experience. This trip was a reminder of how urgently we need to cut through algorithm-driven narratives right now and return to careful, compassionate study of difficult realities, shaped by listening first.
