Maryam Al-Ansari (SFS ’26), a Qatari student and member of the Georgetown University Qatar (GU-Q) senior class committee, recently started a personal project titled “100 days, 100 people,” to commemorate her final semester.
However, her plan to take a picture every day with various members of the university community was interrupted in April, when the university announced that it would be operating remotely for the remainder of the semester as a result of escalating war in the Mideast region.
After the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on Feb. 28, Iran responded with retaliatory strikes targeting both Israel and U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar.
As the conflict persisted, Iran’s Ministry of Science and Technology reported that U.S.-Israeli strikes hit 30 Iranian universities. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the armed forces responsible for its ballistic missile program, issued a statement to state media on March 29, threatening to target U.S. universities in the region, such as GU-Q, if the U.S. did not condemn these attacks.
After organizing voluntary departures for international students and implementing hybrid instruction for over a month, GU-Q announced on April 1 that classes would be conducted virtually, with a pass/fail option, for the remainder of the semester. In an email to the community, Dean Safwan Masri described the situation in the region as “too fluid to support a return to in-person operations at this time.”
Al-Ansari acknowledged both her personal disappointment and an upheaval of the senior class committee’s broader work to build the campus community.
“A lot of my plans for our senior year are plans for in-person events like a senior dinner, senior sunrise, which have all been canceled or put on hold,” she said. “It’s just difficult seeing my plans, things that I have worked hard on, go to waste.”
Al-Ansari turned her attention to another tradition she referred to as “senior letters.” Typically, a bulletin board is mounted in the atrium of the GU-Q campus displaying envelopes for every graduating senior, in which community members are invited to leave farewell notes.
Given the campus closure, Al-Ansari created virtual folders for the class of 2026 and sent out instructions to the GU-Q community for sharing their letters.
“I think we deserve to have this tradition, especially during this time where support is definitely needed from our friends, staff, and faculty,” Al-Ansari said.
Gwyneth Estomo (SFS ’27), who was born and raised in Doha, said that it is not her safety that has been most concerning, despite the Qatari Armed Forces’ interception of two Iranian missiles as recently as April 5.
“I don’t necessarily feel unsafe here, I’m with my family,” she said.
Rather, the transition to virtual learning has required the most support.
“What I really miss the most is being at university with my friends and learning in classrooms,” Estomo said. “The sudden shift is very jarring for me, because I didn’t think I’d get to experience online learning again since the pandemic.”
She explained that Dean Masri, along with other professors, has taken to hosting off-campus dinners to celebrate events like Eid al-Fitr, a recent Islamic holiday, and to give students who call Qatar home a new way to connect.
“We hosted one recently at a hotel,” Estomo said. “It was to celebrate Eid. My professors have also been reaching out individually and as a class to just ask how we’re doing, to see if there’s anything they can do to accommodate us.”
For international students, such as Saroosh Zahid (SFS ’27), faculty and staff have conveyed messages of support through virtual community forums. After returning to his home in Pakistan, Zahid described one meeting in which Dean Masri reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring student well-being.
“He kept saying that he can’t rest until his students are in a better place, they are taken care of, they’re not worrying,” Zahid said. “And when someone asked him, ‘Are you planning to leave Qatar as well?’ he said, ‘Qatari students are here, right? So I’m going to be here with them.’ That’s a very important kind of message from leadership.”
This support came not just from faculty and staff, but also from fellow students.
“In the past one and a half months, I’ve come to feel more a part of the community than ever before,” he said. “Anyone who knew anyone was emailing to check in. Even someone you see in class, but never talk to, would email you and ask, ‘Are you OK? Is everything fine? Where are you located these days?’”
Despite his gratitude for the opportunity to spend the month of Ramadan with his family, Zahid expressed his readiness to return to the life he “built from scratch” at GU-Q.
“I also feel, at many times of the day, that I really want to go back to Doha, despite being with family right now,” Zahid said. “How can I be here when my friends are still there?”
While the campus closure has created uncertainty, Zahid is confident in the GU-Q community’s resilience.
“We’re optimistic that in the grand scheme of things, everything will work out,” he said. “Maybe it’s going to take a month, maybe two. We’re not sure about anything right now, but everyone is hopeful to the degree they can be. Somehow we all have trust in Qatar that they will work something out, because they always do.”
