I’m Learning About the World by Meeting the People Who Shape It
By Radiyah Ahmed (GU-Q’28)
At Georgetown Qatar, you never really know who you’re going to run into on campus. One week you’re stressing about deadlines, and the next you’re walking past the Prime Minister of Albania on his way to give a talk. And yes, that is a real example. Things like that somehow feel normal here, which is wild when you think about it. It’s literally the School of Foreign Service, and it shows.
We have these peak people coming in all the time; diplomats, artists, economists, authors, policy shapers, UN folks, World Bank folks. You name a field, we’ve probably hosted someone who’s shaped it. The “Distinguished Guest Speaker Series” keeps getting more distinguished; the “Diplomat-in-Residence” program somehow keeps pulling actual icons. Not too long ago, GU-Q announced H.E. Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari and Ambassador Dimitri Alexandrakis as our Diplomats-in-Residence, both with decades of diplomatic work and success in their history: UN experience, cultural leadership, humanitarian initiatives, entire careers built across continents, and awards I probably pronounce wrong. It’s unreal.
And then there’s the Artist-in-Residence program, which casually brought Saint Levant to campus for nearly ten full days. Ten. That’s like a study-abroad program in reverse. He held office hours every day, talked to students one-on-one, gave a fireside chat, and then had a public conversation with Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani. Only at GU-Q do you have people from your Spotify playlist offering feedback on your class project, being your therapist, and playing card games with you.
But it doesn’t stop there. We also have Writers-in-Residence, Practitioners-in-Residence, Scholars-in-Residence; basically a rotating cast of people who have published books, shaped policies, led international organizations, won major awards, or redefined their fields entirely. Meanwhile, they’re just sitting with us in the library, answering our questions, and treating us like future colleagues instead of confused undergrads.
And on top of all this, our visiting faculty each semester are genuinely incredible. Every time a new list is released, it feels like a mini Oscars announcement. Professors from our hilltop campus in Washington D.C., Oxford, Columbia, think tanks, museums, ministries; people who have written textbooks and shaped global conversations. They come here, teach us, and somehow still know all our names by week three because the campus is small enough to make it feel personal. They love office hours. They live for office hours. I once went to ask one question and left forty minutes later with three book recommendations and an accidental pep talk about my career.
Our faculty are just as impressive. They have published books or major research, appear on TV regularly, and still manage to explain complex theories in ways that make sense at 9 a.m. They’re passionate, generous with their time, and genuinely excited to see us grow.
What I love most is how all of this shapes our day-to-day learning. It’s not just lectures and readings; it’s real conversations with people who have lived the history we study. It’s hearing about diplomacy from actual diplomats, international law from practitioners who negotiated on-the-ground, art from people who built cultural movements, and literature from authors whose work changed the field. It’s the feeling of being taken seriously as a student because the school is making sure we’re capable of joining these conversations someday.
And honestly? It’s a privilege. A unique one. Being a Hoya means you don’t just study global affairs, you live it. It makes the campus feel a little magical sometimes, like any ordinary Tuesday could suddenly turn extraordinary, simply because of who walks through our doors.
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