The Bosnian Student Project 10-year Reunion

By Doug Hostetter

In the fall of 1993, the height of the war in Bosnia, the FOR began the Bosnian Student Project in cooperation with the Jerrahi Order of America, a Sufi Muslim relief and service organization with headquarters in Chestnut Ridge, NY. The Bosnian Student Project (BSP) was a nonviolent response to the genocide which was perpetrated by Serbian and Croatian "Christians" against Bosnian "Muslims" and others who were struggling for a pluralistic, multicultural Bosnia. The Project challenged FOR Local Groups as well as other Jews, Christians and Muslims in the US to open their homes and schools to Muslim, mixed ethnic and other Bosnian students unable to continue their education due to "ethnic cleansing" or the war. By the end of the Bosnian and Kosovar wars, the BSP had helped more than 160 students escape from the war zone and continue their education in the US. The students were mostly Bosnian, but also included a hand-full of Kosovar Albanian Muslims, and one Serb military resistor who, when called up for military service in Kosovo, escaped to Montenegro to accept a scholarship with the Bosnian Student Project.

The Bosnian Student Project was the inspiration and the logistical framework for bringing together qualified Bosnian students in need of an education with FOR Local Groups, host families, high schools, colleges and universities willing to help these students. Once a student was placed, the local network took on the responsibility for the ongoing care of that student. As the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo ended, the FOR closed the Bosnian Student Project office in Nyack. Students continued their education, often with the support of the FOR Local Groups, host families and other support communities which had originally sponsored the student’s coming to the US.

A few of the BSP students are still enrolled in graduate or post graduate academic programs, but most have finished their education and scattered. Some returned to their families in Bosnia while others joined their families who had resettled in the US after coming as refugees during the war. Other students got jobs in the US, Bosnia, Europe or Asia. Several students reminded me that this year was the 10^th anniversary of the beginning of the Bosnian Student Project, and asked if FOR could organize a reunion for BSP students still in the US.

Although BSP students were now scattered across the US and around the world, we used the network of several dozen former students and organizers with whom we were still in touch to get out the word that a Bosnian Student Project reunion was happening April 9 – 11, 2004 at the FOR in Nyack, NY.

It was an exciting gathering of former students, new spouses, organizers, host families and friends. Several dozen students now living in Bosnia, Europe or elsewhere sent letters of greetings and updates on their lives and work, sometimes accompanied by pictures of spouses and children. We shared old photo albums and scrap books of clippings from the years of the project, 1993 – 1997. Together we watched the three videos which were done on the Bosnian Student Project as well as some early home-video of BSP students who were hosted by Jerrahi Order families during a 1993 New Years Eve celebration. Shaykh Tosun Bayrak, who first envisioned the Bosnian Student Project, invited everyone to the mosque for dinner Saturday night. For the many BSP students who attended HS in Rockland County during the war, the mosque Saturday night dinner was the one time during the week when they could always count on finding at least a half-dozen other Bosnians.

One of the highlights of the reunion was the several-hour informal meeting with Ambassador Mirza Kusljugic, the Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Kusljugic praised the students for their academic and professional achievement, and thanked the FOR for initiating the Bosnians Student Project which enabled so many talented students to continue an education which had been cut short by the Bosnian War. He pointed out to the students that they are a unique "Bridge Generation" who carry in their memories the pain of the war, but more importantly, the knowledge of pre-war Bosnia. Students in the university in Bosnia today have only childhood memories of the war and  pre-war Bosnia, and the students who follow will have no personal roots to those important events which have shaped today's Bosnia.   Because of the years spent in academic work in this country, BSP graduates are  actually  a double "bridge generation"   as they also carry in themselves the knowledge and  deep understanding of both Bosnia and the United States.

Ambassador Kusljugic acknowledged that Bosnia was not yet ready or able to offer good jobs to students who had risen to the top of their academic fields and chosen professions. Rather than longing for jobs that do not yet exist in Bosnia, the Ambassador offered to facilitate contact between BSP graduates and professionals in their fields in Bosnia. These contacts and exchange visits between Bosnian professionals in the US and their counterparts in Bosnia could strengthen both groups. It would be a way for Bosnian/Americans to keep in touch with their families, friends and homeland while contributing to knowledge and professional development of their counterparts back home.

Almost every participant at the reunion took some time during the weekend to express to me their thanks to the FOR for reaching out to them during the dark days of the War in Bosnia and giving them the opportunity to continue their education. Early in the war a mother of two of the BSP students wrote me, "When the entire world turned its back on the Bosnian people, the Bosnian Student Project reached out and loved my children."

Email: DougHostetter@earthlink.net