This semester, the Amman, Jordan program was relocated due to security concerns.
The Overseas and Off-Campus Programs office has implemented some changes in their study abroad programs offered for the Fall 2027 semester, including some returning and changed programs.
The Amman, Jordan study abroad program has previously faced significant change that impacted students participating this semester, as it was relocated to Barcelona, Spain. The relocation was only for the current Fall 2026 semester, and the program will return to its usual location in Amman in following semesters. The program is offered annually during both the spring and fall semesters.
CET Academic Programs is the overarching organization that manages the program in Amman that decided to relocate the program. The Mossy Log talked to Paul Powers, professor of religious studies and campus contact for the program, who attributed this relocation to security concerns in Jordan expressed by the organization.
“Because of basically being caught between two war zones … the Gaza war and the war in Lebanon on the one side, and then the Iran war on the other side,” Powers said. “They assessed that for right at that moment when they had to be making the decision about where the program would be, that they were concerned that they couldn’t guarantee it as well as they normally would.”
The U.S. Department of State has travel advisory for every country, which rates them on safety levels from one to four; one being low risk and four being very high risk. On March 2, they updated their travel advisory for Jordan from level two to three, with level two advising increased caution and level three advising reconsideration of travel plans. The department cited concerns of “terrorism and armed conflict” as the reason for raising the advisory level.
Further security alerts from the U.S. Embassy in Jordan throughout July and August alarmed CET, leading them to relocate the program to Barcelona.
Powers explained that a major concern for CET was that students would be discouraged from doing the program in Jordan due to the increased security alerts from the embassy, prompting the relocation.
Powers further emphasized that despite the pressure and alarms, Jordan remains a stable country. He reaffirmed that the program will continue in Amman in the upcoming Spring and Fall 2027 semesters.
On Aug. 29, the State Department retracted their order from March for nonemergency U.S. government employees in Jordan and their families to leave the country. They are now allowed to return to Jordan, indicating that the country’s state is restabilizing.
For this semester only, the program is running in Barcelona while still maintaining its core focus on Middle East and North African studies and language learning.
“CET runs a different program in Barcelona, so they had the infrastructure and resources to tap into that,” Powers said. “They were able to move instructors and programming to Barcelona and tap in a little bit to the history of Arab and Muslim presence in southern Spain.”
While the program may be limited in its Arabic language immersion aspect, Powers said students will still be doing several hours of language studies per day. Moreover, there will be a short excursion during the program to Morocco, where they will be in an Arabic-speaking environment.
“They’ll still get into an Arabic-speaking place,” he said. “So as a compromise, it’s not the worst.”
The India Regional Area Study program has recently faced some struggles as well but is returning for Fall 2027 semester. Due to limited funding, programs will be rotated so that each year there are only six faculty-led programs. The rotation cycle will also ensure that every program gets offered at least once every four years. To adjust to this limitation, the India Regional Area Study program went on hiatus after it was last offered in 2023 and now is returning for Fall 2027. Kaley Mason, music department chair and leader of the program, spoke to The Mossy Log about this pause.
“According to this new policy where we would only run a certain number every semester,” he said, “with that policy came the difficult decision that you had to have a program sit out of their cycle once, and that rotated across programs. … India just happened to sit out the first round of the cycle. But normally, it should be offered every second year.”
The program will now be offered every second year in the fall semester. Mason expressed his excitement for the return of the program and its new redesign.
“This particular version of the India Regional Area Study Program was created three years ago,” Mason said. “It is a program that was completely redesigned from scratch. We decided to work with another provider, and the provider is the American Institute of Indian Studies.”
The program initiates in Keralam, India, where students will spend six weeks learning about Indian society, history, politics, religion and culture. Then they move to Gurugram, India where they have an orientation on the main campus of the American Institute of Indian Studies, the provider for Lewis & Clark’s program. There, they will explore and learn about arts and culture in India, including cinema, visual arts, architecture, performance arts and archaeology.
Students on the program will be studying in various different cities in India, including Chennai, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, and Kochi and will end back in Keralam. Mason, who designed the courses for the program, wanted to ensure that students have a holistic, hands-on learning experience in various disciplines and across different regions and cities in India.
“India is a subcontinent, so it’s incredibly vast and incredibly diverse culturally, linguistically, geographically, historically,” he said. “And the whole program was designed to make sure that people had a deep experiential appreciation of that diversity.”
Other programs that have undergone changes include the Berlin program, which now includes an optional data science focus under its new program leader, Professor of Political Science Ellen Seljan. The Fukuoka, Japan program faced some changes as it now includes fewer prerequisite courses. Students must take either one semester of a Japanese language course or an Asian studies course with a Japanese component.
About the Author
