A Meeting in Dubai

Pat Wand

Zayed University, my current employer, recently sponsored the “Women as Global Leaders” conference in Dubai which was attended by 500 or so international students and scholars. Key speakers included Jane Fonda, Carol Belamy, Helen Thomas and Sarah Ferguson.

During the first day of the conference some colleagues alerted me that there was a Colombia scholar in attendance. I found out when he was presenting his paper and, of course, I attended. His name is Pablo Abitbol.

After his excellent paper, a case study with women’s groups in Colombia, dealing with public policy in conflict zones, I approached him to learn more about the project and to tell him of my recent visit to Colombia. As we talked, I asked if this was his first visit to the Middle East. He said, “Yes. In fact, I am now studying for my doctorate in Germany and the only other time I left Colombia was when I had a scholarship from Friends of Colombia to work as a research assistant in Washington D.C.”

It all became clear. I remembered him and our successful efforts to bring him to D.C. in 1992, where he worked at Johns Hopkins-SIAS with a faculty member with whom he still communicates. He was obviously deeply and positively affected by that experience.

He remembered the generosity of Bob Colombo and Susan Meyer and of Haroldo and Pat Suárez, with whom he stayed. He acknowledged that besides being a good student, he was selected because he was the son of a struggling single mother (his father died when he was very young) who had no money to send him abroad. He did his B.A. in political science at Universidad de los Andes.

I dropped him at his guest house after the conference, invited him to dinner at my apartment to meet other friends on the weekend, and met him at the Dubai Art Fair. His English is excellent and of course he is now learning German. His Colombian wife, a jewelry maker, is with him in Germany. I intend to stay in touch with him. He is a delightful man, very intelligent, articulate, intellectually curious, and deeply committed to developing public policy for social justice. He has worked in several Colombian government offices and has done consulting on public policy development.

I hope some of you remember Pablo, too. I suspect you will be as pleased as I am to learn that he has richly built upon the educational opportunity we provided for him. In particular, Bob, I know you worked hard on this project. And with great success!