USD Magazine, Summer 2004

"Uncle Joe" sits beside Mohammed AJ-Najim (former president of Basra and Suleimaniyah Universities) in a Black Hawk military helicopter (left) .

Iraqi students (abqve) - from universities and technical institutes - turned out in droves to learn about the Fulbright Program , which had been absent from the country for more than a decade.

by Julene Snyder

I t's aJune evening in Baghdad, Iraq, and the temperature still hovers near 130 degrees. Thankfully, it's considerably cooler inside one offormer Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's palaces, where Joseph Ghougassian (MA. '77, JD. '80) is settled in for the night, responding to e-mails and catching up on correspondence. When asked to describe his surroundings, he pauses, thinking. "Well, the palace is huge, four blocks long, " he says. '1t's much bigger than the White House. Ofcourse the complex is fortified by high walls

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