Date:
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Time:
3:00 PM - 4:15 PM

The Global Refugee Crisis: Higher Education's Role in Responding

Location

Online registration for this event has now closed. To participate, please visit the zoom link to the event to register and join the call. Please contact Matt Donovan at mattdonovan@gwu.edu with any questions. 

This event is open to all GW community members and the general public for virtual participation via Zoom. Details for joining the event by computer or phone will be sent the day before the event. Please be mindful of the Time Zone of the presentation (ET).

Event Description

Join the Elliott School of International Affairs for a discussion on higher education's multi-faceted support for refugees in recent years, as well as how universities around the country are responding to the global refugee crisis. 
 
Speakers with experience in student advocacy, faculty engagement, administration involvement, and multilateral organization collaboration will touch on ways the national higher education ecosystem can further support refugee resettlement and protections, and how alumni, staff, and students of GW and other universities are working to be part of that process. Panelists are all experts in the fields of refugee resettlement and asylum through higher education, and of Complementary Pathways, and they will host a holistic discussion on the role of higher education in this crisis while discussing what more universities and community members can do to make a difference. 

Co-sponsored by No Lost Generation GWU (NLG GWU), a student-led refugee-advocacy group, this event commemorates World Refugee Day on June 20, as part of a series with the Sunset Run for Refugees and its Virtual 5K this year. 

 

Speakers

Kyle Farmbry 2021 Headshot

Kyle Farmbry, ESIA BA ‘92, TSPPPA MPA ‘94, Ph.D. ‘99, JD (Rutgers), is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. From August 2013 to July 2019, he served as Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University-Newark. Prior to joining the faculty of Rutgers, Farmbry taught at The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Diego State University, California and Grand Valley State University. He has also served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Gdansk in Gdansk, Poland, and Benxi University in Benxi, China. In 2016 he served as a Fulbright Fellow examining European Union immigration policies -- with an emphasis on the challenges and management of the North African refugee movement and integration in the nation of Malta. In February of 2009, Dr. Farmbry was selected as one of thirty-five people from around the world to serve as a Fulbright New Century Scholar. In this role, he was engaged in research examining factors of youth entrepreneurial and civic engagement in South Africa. In November of 2017, he served as one of the founding members of the University Alliance for Refugees and at Risk Migrants, an effort which aims to engage universities and their communities in local and international advocacy efforts on behalf of refugees and at-risk migrants. Dr. Farmbry is a former Trustee of George Washington University. 


Rosie Hughes Headshot

Rosie Hughes is a Refugee Education Pathways Expert at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s office in Washington, DC. She has worked for humanitarian aid organizations, including UNHCR, in multiple countries across Asia and Africa and as a journalist in France and her home state of Maine. More recently, she taught writing and storytelling to refugee students in the U.S. and received a Master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 

Olivia Issa Headshot

Olivia Issa is a rising fourth-year undergraduate student at The George Washington University studying political science and Arabic. Olivia is the Executive Director of No Lost Generation GWU (NLG GWU), a student-led refugee-advocacy group at GW, and  Co-Chair of the Steering Committee for the University Alliance for Refugees and at-Risk Migrant's Student Voices for Refugees (SVR). For the past six years, Olivia has been engaged with refugee-advocacy and resettlement work in Chicago and Washington D.C., volunteering and interning with resettlement agencies and refugee aid providers throughout both cities. Olivia has specialized in working with refugee girls and young women through tutoring, teaching dance classes, mentoring, and more. In the past year, she has led interviews and research into higher education access as a pathway to refugee status in her role as a volunteer with SVR, and aims to start a scholarship for refugee students at the George Washington University.


Bernhard Streitweiser Headshot

Bernhard Streitweiser is Associate Professor, International Education & International Affairs at George Washington University. His research looks at the impact of globalization on the internationalization of higher education. Dr. Streitwieser is on the steering committee of the University Alliance for Refugees and at Risk Migrants and runs the Berlin Refugee Research Group (BRRG) with colleagues in Germany. In 2016 he won a research grant for his study on “German Higher Education and Credentialing Newly Arrived Immigrants,” focusing on Syrian and other newly arrived refugees integrating into German higher education. In 2018 he received funding from the International Institute of Education's Platform for Education in Emergencies Response (PEER) and the Catalyst Foundation to conduct a study “From Non-formal-to-Formal Educational Pathways for Refugee Students. A Research Study Comparing Higher Education Interventions for Refugees in Germany and Lebanon. Dr. Streitwieser earned his PhD in International and Comparative Education from Columbia University, Teachers College; his MS in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University; and his BA in International Relations and a Minor in Spanish from the University of Virginia.

Online registration for this event has now closed.