HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan visits Cambridge
On Sunday 9 January HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan visited Cambridge to take part in an informal roundtable discussion of current Middle Eastern issues with Cambridge graduate students from Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, China, Tunisia and Egypt.
His Royal Highness, who was accompanied by Princess Sarvath El Hassan, was formerly a Trustee of the Cambridge Overseas Trust and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and is now a member of the Trusts’ newly formed International Advisory Council.
After an informal meeting with the students and with representatives of the Trusts, the group took part in a wide-ranging discussion. This was chaired by Professor Yasir Suleiman, who is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa'id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University, and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies.
The discussion covered many topics of relevance to the Middle East, including higher education in the Arab world, democratisation in the region, specific issues in Palestine, Israel and Lebanon, and even the definition of the term 'Middle East' itself.
The Cambridge Overseas Trust is grateful to His Royal Highness for his advice on and support for the expansion of the Trust's range of scholarships available to students from the Middle East. These now include the IDB Cambridge International Scholarship and OSI Middle East Cambridge Scholarship for PhD students, and the longer-running Saïd Foundation Cambridge Scholarship and Arab-British Chamber Cambridge Scholarship.