When David Azevedo was a freshman at Loyola Marymount University, he was a film major who wanted to tell stories. As he leaves for Tunisia to study Arabic this summer on a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, he’s changed his direction and his major.
Azevedo, who will be a junior this fall, says he no long wants to just tell stories; he wants to be engaged in those stories. He is now a political science major who’s decided to go out and get involved in one of the biggest stories around.
“The Middle East and the whole of the Muslim culture have always fascinated me,” said Azevedo, who is an editor of Passion Magazine, LMU’s student social justice and service publication. “Last year we had a program where we invited a rabbi and some Palestinians to discuss Israeli-Palestinian issues and it was a successful dialogue. I love being part of the conversation.” So much so that he applied for and received a scholarship to study Arabic.
“I’d love to learn Arabic and Hebrew both,” says Azevedo. “I am very much neutral [in the debate between Israel and the Palestinians] but I would love to see both cultures, both are so rich.”
Azevedo will spend his summer in Tunis, the capital city, studying six hours a day, five days a week with weekends free for travel. “Most of the course is language. The rest is the cultural history of Tunisia and the rest of the Muslim world,” he says. He will spend a month living with a family and the second month sharing an apartment with fellow students.
Besides learning as much Arabic as he can in two months, “I want to see all of North Africa and see the Sahara,” he says smiling broadly.
When he returns to LMU, Azevedo plans to continue studying Arabic and he may take some Hebrew courses. But that will have to wait: Two weeks after he comes home, he leaves for London. Acevedo has also been named a Hansard Scholar and will spend the fall 2009 semester interning for a member of the British Parliament while taking classes in British politics, government and public policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Azevedo says he’s still interested in telling stories, they will just be from a different perspective.
“When I talked to political science professors and took some courses I realized there would be more challenging stories of the world, society and the community. You would be actively engaged in those stories. I would be seeing stories for myself. So far, political science has challenged me – it’s a great journey.”