Northwestern University, whose Medill school has produced numerous luminaries in the reporting and entertainment fields, launched a four-year undergraduate journalism and communications program at Education City in Doha, Qatar in 2008.
Northwestern University in Qatar,* according to Dean and CEO Dr. Everette E. Dennis, is committed not only to “learning and the advancement of knowledge,” but to “promoting the value of freedom of expression.” NU-Q is educating “the next generation of global, media and entertainment professionals,” and, the dean notes, its “students and faculty work with a guarantee of academic freedom; students write, film and publish freely, and classrooms are alive with debate.”
“How goes it?” asked the late Richard Heffner, the host of PBS’s “The Open Mind” for 56 years, in one of the last episodes taped before Heffner’s passing in December 2013 (“The Open Mind” continues with Heffner’s grandson, Alexander Heffner, at the helm). In this episode, which aired on WNET, Channel 13, on April 5, 2014, Richard Heffner explores with Dennis, more than five years after the school’s opening, what it has been like teaching journalism in a region where freedom of expression has not traditionally been part of the culture.
You can watch the entire interview here:
* NU-Q is a Greenberg Media client