Libya

One reason I wanted to come to the UK for graduate school was to gain a more global perspective of the world around me. The quality of life is similar between the US and the UK but there is a huge difference in censorship, accessibility and importance to knowing what is going on in the world around you.

There are five of us students who started the doctorate business program this February. Me and four Middle Eastern men; three of which are from Libya. One of these men has his wife and three children still in Libya and they had anticipated moving here in a few months.

None of these men were in class last night as violent protest erupted in Libya yesterday.

Egypt, Tunisia, Libya. These wars and protest and politically unstable countries affect immediate people that you know here in the UK. Talking with a flatmate who has family in the US and travels there quiet a bit understands how American's are about international news. It's not that it isn't important to us, but it doesn't have the same immediacy. And as he put it, when refugees move to the US they want to become American but when refugees move to the UK they still want to be Egyptians or Libyans etc.

In the US if you want to know what is going on internationally you have to go out searching for the information. It's not coming to you. And it is so censored. I don't mean politically censored so that it's more American centric and the US is so great. Sure, every country does a bit of that, but what I mean is it is a polished, clean and censored version of war and violence and the ravages on the human body and life. And that makes it easier to think it's not really all that bad. Until you are sitting in a classroom where half your classmates are missing because they have family on the other side of a border that can't be crossed.