October 10 , 2008

Visiting Palestinian professor hopes to relay understanding about her native culture

By Nolan Rosenkrans | Winona Daily News

Muna Matar says she looks like your average Palestinian, even if most of the people she meets in Minnesota may think she's an anomaly. She isn't covered by a veil. She wears jeans to class when she teaches. And she speaks nearly perfect English, though her accent hints at her ethnicity. She hopes by speaking, teaching and being here, people will begin to see Palestinians less like they do on TV and more like she does in her everyday life.

Muna Matar, a visiting professor from Bethlehem University in Palestine, is teaching a class about misconceptions of Middle Eastern women at Saint Mary's University in Winona. (Photo by Fred Schulze/Winona Daily News)

She hopes when people see her, they see what she sees in the mirror — not a caricature.

“I hope through interaction, people will learn,” she said.

Matar, a professor of computer science at Bethlehem University in Palestine , is calling Winona home this academic year. The Christian-Palestinian is teaching a class about Middle Eastern women at Winona 's two universities, with the hope of changing some of the misconceptions that Americans have about a people she says is often misunderstood.

Saint Mary's University's connection with Bethlehem University — both are La Sallian universities administered by Christian Brothers — provided the bridge that brought Matar here. Now SMU and Winona State University feature the class “Women in the Middle East ” this year, as Matar teaches students about the diversity in places such as Palestine .


Her career

Matar calls Beit Jala home. The town, a sister city to Bethlehem , is about half the size of Winona . It is predominantly Christian and mostly middle class.

She went to public school, while her siblings went to private schools. After receiving a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Bethlehem , Matar took a chance and went for her master's in computer science from Oregon State University . It was an opportunity for her to be adventurous and bring back expertise to her homeland. Computer science was an absent field in Palestine when she left.

She remembers when Bethlehem got its first computer.

“It had to have its own special room with air conditioning,” she said.

She then found her way to Belgium , where she studied and taught at Ghent University , and then returned to begin a fledgling computer science department at Bethlehem . Then she heard there was an opportunity to be a visiting professor at an American university.

“I had never heard of Winona before then,” she said.

The computer science department at Bethlehem is still small, she said, and it was hard to leave, even temporarily, when things are just beginning. It also was hard to leave her family and friends again. When she was in Oregon , it wasn't so bad because she has relatives in Washington . In Minnesota , she has no one.

But her adventurous spirit told her to take the chance.

Living in occupation

Beit Jala has been cut in half. Israel has been building a barrier between itself and the Palestinian territories, and the wall runs through the heart of Matar's town. The imposing structure towers over homes.

Like nearly anything involved in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the wall is controversial. On one side, it is seen as a necessary security measure to keep terrorists out of Israel . On the other side, it is seen as another mark of oppression, much like the Berlin Wall.

The barrier has made already-difficult movement by Palestinians, even educated Christian ones like Matar, nearly impossible. You can see Jerusalem from Beit Jala, she said, but it can take hours to get there — if you can get through security checkpoints. What would be a day trip across Israel now takes weeks, she said.

Simply living near the wall is disheartening for people. They wake up to a constant reminder of separation and fear.

“You get up in the morning, and see a big wall of cement,” she said.

Matar is not shy about her views as a Palestinian. There is no vitriol in her voice. She doesn't hate Israel ; she doesn't hate Jews. She sees the conflict as one stirred by political and religious fanatics on both sides, bent on continuing the conflict forever.

The people on both sides are not so different from each other, she says. But then there's the politics.

“You never appreciate the kind of life you have until you see how other people are living,” she said. “When your students who live 15 minutes away from campus take hours to get to campus, it is disturbing and can be sometimes dangerous.”

She recalls being mistreated by soldiers at checkpoints and being forced to wait hours simply because she was Palestinian. She doesn't excuse the people who commit atrocities in what they say is the name of religion. But, like most Palestinians, that doesn't mean she doesn't have constant frustrations with what she calls the “Israeli occupation.”

She doesn't see why harsh security measures should apply to a woman with a doctorate who teaches at a Catholic university because of where she is from.

“You, as an American, can come there and go wherever you want, no questions asked,” she said. “I was born there, my parents were born there, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, all my family for hundreds of years. But I can't move freely,” she said.

Teaching in America

Bethlehem University and SMU are very much alike, Matar said. Both are small, La Sallian schools, and they speak English in classes. Teachers have many of the same concerns and talk about the same things. And her students remind her of home, although they dress differently.

“Students back home don't come to class in shorts,” she said, laughing. “But they do come late.”

The first day of class, she showed students a map of the Middle East , and asked them to name the countries on the map. Most could only name a few, so Matar spent the first few classes introducing students to the countries they would be talking about.

Next, Matar asked her students to write down what they think of when she says “Middle Eastern women.” They wrote things like obedient, shadow of a man, covered from head to toe. These are common perceptions of Palestinians, she said.

But many are like her, she tells them. Yes, there are Muslim fanatics. Yes, some live under the oppressive Sharia Law, the legal framework for Muslims that often limits the rights of women. Some communities in the Middle East treat women as lesser creatures than men.

But many of those things occur in America , too, she said. It's the nuance she's teaching, that all people of a region are not the same. And understanding the diversity of a culture is the only way to truly understand it.

“I'm not here to preach. I'm here to tell my story and help people see something different,” she said. “You then can make your own judgments. I'm not here to convince anyone.”

Nolan Rosenkrans may be reached at (507) 453-3519 or at nolan.rosenkrans@lee.net .

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