Abou EPU
The EPU program represents a challenge to students both inside and outside the classroom. It facilitates conversations and reflections on the many theoretical and practical issues the world is confronted with today.
Inside the class-room a high standard prevails given the high quality of EPU's international faculty. But learning also occurs outside class, facilitated by the fact that EPU students and faculty live together in a small community, in close proximity to each other, with little of the distractions that characterise modern cities. Ideas raised in the academic courses continue to be debated informally afterwards. This stimulates a growth of a community of scholars (around thirty to fifty persons) that is particularly rich not only because of the transnational character of the faculty but also because of the many different cultural backgrounds and practical experiences of EPU students.
Students admitted into this program should therefore be prepared to find themselves living together with students from Bosnia, Bhutan, Pakistan, Japan, Nigeria, Columbia, Mexico, the USA, Uganda, Rwanda, Germany or Russia, to name just a few of the countries which EPU students call home. Since EPU began in 1990, over 700 students have come from 85 different countries. The individuals themselves often reflect the cross-pressures and dislocations of the modern world. Thus, one student may be a Muslim from Los Angeles, another a feminist from Indonesia, or a young diplomat from Uganda. Many will have experienced war and lost loved ones.
The EPU Experience:
Upon completion of a semester at the EPU, the chances are high that the students' perceptions of their own societies as well as that of others will have been challenged if not changed. A new web of relationships is woven into the fabric of an individual student's life. The EPU staff have seen intimate friendships develop between students of disparate backgrounds. You may find yourself invited to a wedding in India, a rock festival in Denmark, or for a holiday on the beach in Gambia. Or you might be asked to help support peace work in Georgia, rebuild a town in Bosnia, or resettle someone fleeing war.
The EPU provides students with an understanding of peace and conflict in the world that reaches beyond purely academic limits. The EPU's effort has been to create an embryonic experience of what a true transnational culture might be like, respectful of diversity and pluralism, without the constant threat of conflict, but with a permanent need for tolerance, understanding and mutual learning.
