Why in the World Go to Ireland?

The question came bluntly and succinctly from an African American professor I met at a NAFSA conference. She was teaching in a university in the Southern United States, and seeking out study abroad options for her students. Ireland was not top of her list. “Why in the world would our students want to go to Ireland?” she asked incredulously.

I explained to this professor the profound impact I witnessed every time African American students discovered that the civil rights movement in Ireland in 1968 was modeled on the American civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the shared narrative of discrimination, segregation, and persecution. I told her about our Hawaiian, Native American, and Hispanic students who identified with the narrative of cultural subjugation and revival. County Donegal, the home base of Study Abroad Ireland, is an area within the Republic of Ireland renowned for its beauty and friendly people, but for decades it was affected by high levels of emigration, rural poverty, and proximity to the border of Northern Ireland. Ireland, I explained, with its cultural history of the grim, the grievous, and the grand, provides a template for all U.S. students, wherever their origin.

My interest in teaching U.S. students was inspired by a visit to Boston as a college student myself. I was asked to work at an Irish festival, and I was utterly stunned by the turnout of thousands of people to celebrate a culture that I absolutely took for granted. From then until now