A total of thirty American professors and students traveled to Iraq just a few weeks ago to participate in academic symposiums at the University of Babylon and the University of Baghdad.

St. Cloud University geography professor Elizabeth Leppman said she took part in the conference and went in hopes of using this opportunity as a chance to also see the lands, being that she is a geographer.

University of Kansas social welfare professor Scott Harding also traveled to Iraq for the three-day symposium and did it personally “to learn more about the situation on ground first hand.”

Harding also noted the trip as a unique opportunity to meet with academic colleagues from Iraq.

“I wanted to demonstrate my solidarity with people,” Harding said.

Many of the colleagues Harding developed close ties with will continue to communicate with earned doctorates at American universities, although they have been unable to study in the United Sates for well over a decade.

As a whole, the group of professors and students traveled to Iraq with a number of goals in hand.

“We traveled to Iraq to see for ourselves, insofar as possible, the conditions prevailing in that country,” reads a statement regarding the Iraqi-American Academic Symposium.

This particular operation was dubbed “Academic Airlift,” and includes two other visits scheduled for this spring and next fall.

Another goal of the symposium was to essentially bridge the gap between universities in the United States and in Iraq. Leppman noted the troubles with having such minimal contact between the United States and Iraq, being that there are faculty members in Iraq who don’t receive updates in the fields they are experts in.

Students, who also had their say in the discussion that occurred over the three-day period, were largely outnumbered, however, by professors and other professionals. University of Pennsylvania junior Spencer Witte was the youngest person in the group by six years and went in an attempt to “try to better understand Iraqi people.”

“It put a personal face to an issue that was already important to me,” Witte said.

Witte has remained in touch, through e-mail, with a number of Iraqi students he met and conversed with while participating in the discussions.