EC EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SUMMER PROGRAMS: April 2019

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Hello to Eastern Mediterranean Security Studies Program 2019

This blog will serve as an information exchange board prior to our departure, and will continue to be a forum of exchange of information throughout the trip. This blog has been kept since 2016 and has been an open forum not only for the participants, but also for family and friends that have wanted to follow the program and progress from afar. I ask that you are honest and respectful in your entries and that you share as much as you want, without fear of censorship. This year we have fourteen participants to the program, who will study and travel throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and experience the geopolitical issues of security not only from the perspective of the chessboard, but at the personal level of the street and the community. From Crete, to Athens, to Sicily, to Malta, to Rome, Cyprus, to Crete!

There is a great deal to read and view prior to departure in preparation and I will provide some general sources here and will continue to send information over the next two months. Here are some sources to begin with:

James Stavridis, Sea Power: History and Geopolitics of the World's Oceans

Robert Kaplan, Mediterranean Winter

Marjory McGin, Things Can Only Get Feta

Barry Unsworth, Crete

Women Under Siege

EC Eastern Security Studies Program

In the summer of 2011, as the "Arab Spring" was unfolding and the "Eurozone Crisis" was entering its second year, the Emmanuel College Eastern Mediterranean Security Studies Program was established in Crete, as a way to make the location the classroom. Beyond the grand theoretical, historical and political understanding that can be achieved through reading and classroom discussion and exchange, a more immediate, intimate and truer appreciation of the complexities can only achieved by experiencing the cultures, languages of personal interaction.

Since 2012 students have been able to combine an intensive curricular study, with the experience of immersion and living in a local setting. The geopolitical and geoeconomic forces that have acted in the region for centuries, can be identified in the classroom, but they can only be understood by being there. This year's EC EMSS Program will add a fourth week of study, experience and exploration and will also travel to the islands of Rhodes, and Cyprus. In Rhodes we will be partnering with the Prefecture of Southern Aegean and the Aegean University, while in Cyprus we will be hosted by the University of Nicosia.