ASU co-sponsors Global Media Symposium

Students in Debra van Tuyll’s magazine practicum had an opportunity on Sept. 10 to talk with three prominent Saudi Arabians about how to improve relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

A Global Media Symposium was sponsored by Georgia State University's College of Communications and the Augusta State University Department of Languages, Literature, and Communications. Leonard Teel, professor of journalism history and international media at Georgia State, phoned Dr. van Tuyll, associate professor of communications, to see if she would be interested in partnering with Georgia State to sponsor the symposium.

“I jumped at the chance,” says Dr. van Tuyll. “We have no one at ASU who’s an expert on international communications, so I thought it would be good for our students to be exposed to someone who was, and to hear how people from other parts of the world, including journalists, think about current issues, including the influence of the media (both ours and theirs).”

The panel topic was “Improving U.S.-Saudi Relationships,” but Dr. van Tuyll says the seminar didn’t do anything to improve US-Saudi relations. “It probably made them worse, actually, at least from the perspective of my students,” she says. “But I believe the afternoon was wildly successful because it heightened the awareness of those students about non-American perspectives and ways of viewing the world.”

For example, many of the students were appalled by Saudi Arabians’ claims of having a free society when women there are not allowed to drive cars, says Dr. van Tuyll. She adds that the Saudis (including one woman) dismissed the inability of women to drive as not a major blow to freedom and talked about the demands of Saudi women for an adequate public transportation system rather than the right to transport themselves.

“The students had quite a time getting their minds wrapped around such a definition of ‘freedom’ as something other than individual rights,” Dr. van Tuyll says.

Georgia State has asked ASU to participate in another symposium scheduled for Oct. 23. Dr. van Tuyll has asked the communications faculty if they would like to have their classes attend the next discussion. There will be more information on the next Global Media Symposium coming soon.

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