Shady M. Qubaty / Aden, Yemen
Morse College / Economics and Near Eastern Studies
Speaking from Cairo, Egypt
What did you do for your senior project?
I was writing about how to rebuild Yemen’s economy in the future. Yemen was already the poorest country in the Arab world, and we’re entering the sixth year of this civil war. When it ends, how will you be able to develop the health-care system? To improve education? To rebuild the infrastructure right, from the beginning? You need a lot of funds to come from neighboring countries. I focused on how Yemen could eventually join the Gulf Cooperation Council, the supranational body in the Arabian Peninsula, step by step.
What has been a memorable extracurricular activity for you?
Initiating the campaign to create a fifth cultural house. We have the Asian American Cultural Center, Afro-American Cultural Center, La Casa, and the Native American Cultural Center, and I was working very hard over the past two years to establish the Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Center, MENA.
I learned that it’s best to get some juniors, some sophomores, and some first-years who are very interested, because that means even after you leave, there are people who can carry the torch. I really hope that I’ll be able to come back to campus in the next few years with us having a fully functioning MENA cultural house.
What’s next for you?
I’ll be pursuing my MPhil in development studies at King’s College, Cambridge over the next year. I got Yale’s Henry Fellowship, and then I’m very lucky that Cambridge offered me two scholarships.
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