Our Mission

The Middle Eastern Cultural Programs (MECP) foster student connections, promote education about Middle Eastern cultures, and support student leadership and professional development. Aligned with the University’s diversity commitment, MECP provides vital resources that support the social, cultural, and academic needs of students. MECP highlights issues affecting this underrepresented community and celebrates its rich intersection of regions, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. By bridging academic partners and cultural groups, MECP integrates scholarly perspectives with student cultural experiences.

History

Since its founding in 2018, the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA) has provided a non‑religious, apolitical space for students of Middle Eastern identity and has hosted a variety of cultural programs. Soon after its creation, students expressed the need for a formal cultural space, inspiring MESA to pursue the establishment of a Middle Eastern Cultural Center (MECC). In fall 2018, former students began meeting with campus partners to understand the history of UConn’s cultural centers and explore pathways for creating a similar space. Although early efforts stalled as student leaders and administrators changed, the initiative was later revitalized by alumni who incorporated the MECC project into research, academic work, and campus organizing. Through collaboration, outreach, and student government advocacy, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion approved the creation of a dedicated cultural space in spring 2021—now known as the Middle Eastern Cultural Programs.

Looking Ahead

The movement towards a MECC on the Storrs campus has since fallen at a critical point in time. The Middle Eastern community– undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff –at the University of Connecticut, and in the country at large, is recovering from an administration that targeted their cultural and religious backgrounds (i.e. President Trump’s 2017 Muslim Ban, Executive Order 13769). While President Biden has since reversed this executive order, the effects are lingering. Such effects predate the Trump presidency and have their origins in the lasting hate and discrimination that followed 9/11. In fact, as of March 9, 2021, the Biden administration has announced that it will not issue visas to diversity visa applicants from fiscal year 2017-2020 who were denied as a result of the Muslim Ban (ACLU, 2021). These pervasive effects continue to impact Middle Eastern students as they traverse their undergraduate and graduate careers, and are only compounded by students’ varied experiences as refugees, immigrants, second-generation immigrants, or other intersectional identities. 

Such damage is certainly relevant to a public university, which enrolls students of Middle Eastern background and hopes to set their students up for success and contribute to the well-being of the state. According to the Migration Policy Institute (2015), an approximated 1.02 million refugees from the Middle East are currently residing in the United States, representing 25% of the nation’s refugee population (Zong & Batalova, 2015). As of 2018, Connecticut is home to roughly 8,000 documented immigrants from West Asia (Middle East) and 5,500 from North Africa (State Demographics Data). In the years prior to the Muslim Ban, Connecticut took in the largest number of Syrian refugees compared to its New England neighbors (Connecticut Health Investigative Team, 2017). Such refugee hubs (New Haven and Hartford, in particular) are spread throughout the state and overlap with our student populations, both undergraduate and graduate.