Dean Masri Shares Importance of Global South Voices at Major International Forum in Rome
As the first American pope to hold office, Pope Leo pledged in May to seek peace, charity, and be close to those that are suffering, a commitment that resonates with Georgetown University’s 240-year-old history in the USA as a Catholic, Jesuit institution. To contemplate the intersection of its jesuit values and advancing global peace through education and knowledge production, Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) partnered with Georgetown University’s Berkely Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, and the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education to host leading authors and public thinkers in Rome for a major international forum titled “Human Fraternity in a Divided World: Writers Engage the Legacy of Pope Francis.”
As the university’s only global campus, GU-Q, represented by Dean Safwan Masri and GU-Q Writer-in-Residence Kamila Shamsie, played a central role in hosting the forum to mark five years since the release of Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, a call to overcome global divisions through a renewed commitment to human solidarity. The event was part of the Georgetown Global Dialogues series, which seeks to learn from the Global South, advance human equality, elevate youth perspectives, and build a culture of encounter. Highlights of the forum included discussions with celebrated authors Naomi Klein, Hisham Matar, Zadie Smith, Mohsin Hamid, and Parul Sehgal, among others.
Insights on Reducing Inequalities in Literature
In his welcome address on day two, Dean Masri highlighted the role of storytelling in driving human connection and spiritual transcendence in today’s world. “The late Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti offers a way forward, embracing shared vulnerability as source of grace and genuine connection, a call that recasts what we ask of literature and what literature asks us of us,” he said, adding: “Engaging with these questions sincerely today means recognizing literature [as]… profoundly human dialogue.”
Dean Masri also highlighted the role of institutions and writers from the global south in reframing global discourse in more inclusive ways. In a panel discussion on “The Globalization of Literature in an Unequal World,” he spoke with British-Sudanese writer Nesrine Malik and Indian poet and theorist Ranjit Hoskote about inequities in literary production and circulation, and the need for new frameworks that reflect a broader diversity of voices and experiences.
Photo credit: Georgetown University/Cristian Gennari
Insights on Bridging Differences
Kamila Shamsie, who spent a year at GU-Q teaching her craft and bringing writers from the Global South to engage in dialogue on the importance of diverse storytelling in the modern world, contributed to two thought-provoking panels at the forum. In “Emotions in Literature and Politics,” she joined acclaimed authors Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Nesrine Malik to examine the potential for literature—particularly from the Global South—to foster empathy, justice, and reconciliation in polarized political climates. Shamsie also participated in “Cultural and Religious Pluralism as a Literary Frame” with fellow novelists Mohsin Hamid and Ranjit Hoskote, reflecting on how literary narratives can bridge differences and celebrate complexity in pluralistic societies.
Photo credit: Georgetown University/Cristian Gennari
Furthering Global Dialogue in Qatar
As a testament to the university’s commitment to advancing voices from the Global South, the Dean announced that Malik will be joining GU-Q as a Practitioner-in-Residence in Fall 2025 and will speak at an upcoming Hiwaraat conference on Sudan, and will be hosting the Georgetown Global Dialogues in Spring 2026. He also shared how GU-Q encourages students from the Global South to “engage with layered literary traditions: Arabic, Persian, African, South Asian, and vibrant spiritual inheritances that inform how meaning is made. The result is reorientation of global discourse: knowledge flows not from margins to center, or vice versa, but across, between, and within.”
Student Contributions to Global Dialogues
In advance of the forum in Rome, undergraduate students from GU-Q contributed original essays to the initiative’s online forum, reflecting on the values of fraternity, justice, and humility in a fractured world. Their responses, drawing from their experience growing up in countries all over the world, and the lessons they are learning both within the classroom and through experiential learning at GU-Q, offer valuable insights into timely questions, including how to reimagine human fraternity, where moral authority resides, and how to resist technological utopias. Excerpts from their reflections are found below.
Topic 2: Where Is Moral Authority in Today’s World?
The Authority We Carry
“Growing up in Greece during the aftershocks of the 2008 economic crisis, I learned early that authority, whether political, financial, or moral, is far more fragile than it appears….I’ve come to believe that moral authority today no longer lives solely in the places we used to trust blindly: governments, international organizations, and even global religious leaders. Instead, it feels like moral authority now exists in pockets—in people and spaces where ethical courage and intellectual honesty still thrive, even without power. I see it in the scholars and activists who push against the grain to call out economic injustice. I see it in the quiet decisions of local leaders who choose to act with dignity in systems that reward the opposite. And yes, I’ve seen it in my own mentors—professors who care not just about ideas, but about how those ideas shape real human lives.” Read more.
––Panos Dalgiannakis, Class of 2027
Moral Authority from the Margins: Reclaiming Moral Authority Through Lived Human Experience
“In my course Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution, we ask where people turn when formal institutions betray them. The answer, increasingly, is toward decentralized, lived expressions of morality. I have encountered this firsthand. In Peru’s Andes, I spoke with Kechua community members whose relationship to land and tradition was both ecological and spiritual. For them, environmental degradation is not just a policy failure—it’s a moral violation of ancestral balance…These grassroots voices offer an alternative to the fading moral authority of international bodies, which too often remain silent in the face of global suffering. Amid conflict and inequality, it is the storytellers, the teachers and professors, the protesting Hoyas at the Red Square, the everyday resistors, especially from the Global South, who hold the ethical line.” See essay.
––Aras Karlidag, Class of 2025
Echoes of Truth: Where Justice and Moral Authority Reside
“From local restitution movements to digital activism that amplifies marginalized voices, power is no longer something passed down but is gained through closeness to suffering, the bravery to express it, and the vision for a brighter future. In this redefined moral landscape, justice is pursued from the grassroots level, and those who act with honesty, empathy, and a steadfast commitment to truth are seen as legitimate.” See response.
––Bayan Quneibi, Class of 2026
Where the Framework Breaks, the Margins Begin
“As an international politics major concentrating in international law, I’ve often been taught to analyze norms, treaties, and institutions. But some of the most urgent lessons came outside the classroom. They came from students whose lack of citizenship limited their futures, women navigating devalued care work, and peers critiquing how humanitarian efforts can reinforce the hierarchies they aim to dismantle. These encounters revealed how global frameworks often silence the voices they claim to represent.” Read more.
––Jay Pacer, Class of 2026
Not in Power, But in Truth
“Coming from a region where people have waited decades to be seen and heard, I realized that moral authority can’t rest with institutions that only listen when it’s convenient. Religious and community leaders have helped shape my values, but I’ve also learned to be cautious when belief is used to justify harm. In a world so diverse, no single belief system can guide everyone, but the shared values of dignity, care, and justice can. I’ve seen these values most clearly not in powerful figures, but in the actions of students, educators, and ordinary people who refuse to stay quiet.” Read full essay.
––Shahid Usman, Class of 2028
Topic 3: Can We Resist the Appeal of Technological Utopias?
From Petroleum to Processors: The Ecological Wisdom of Technological Humility
“The wisdom in acknowledging precarity doesn’t lie in abandoning technological development, instead it lies in recognizing its embeddedness in earthly systems. The petroleum era demonstrated that technological revolutions ignoring material constraints ultimately undermine themselves. With AI, we face a similar choice: between unlimited power and a more humble recognition of our dependence on fragile ecological and social systems.” Read more.
––Amira Zhanat, Class of 2027
Further support for the Rome gathering was co-sponsored by the Georgetown Rome Office, La Civiltà Cattolica, and the All of Us Foundation. These conversations underscore GU-Q’s 20-year-long history of fostering meaningful global dialogue across cultures and disciplines, grounded in the values of justice, inclusion, and the common good.