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| Source: ANU, CAIS. The debating team. |
A team of four students from the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies (CAIS) represented Australia and the Australian National University (ANU) at the Third International Universities Arabic Debating Championship held in Doha, Qatar from 26 to 29 April 2015.
“I am very proud of the team’s performance,” Abdel Ghafar said. “Their performance is a reflection on both the student’s debating skills and the world-class quality of the Arabic programme at CAIS.”
Despite the challenges of debating with native speakers of Arabic, the ANU team - Yara Hussien, Thomas Randall, Derek Bayley and Andrew Findell-Aghnatios, led by CAIS PhD scholar Adel Abdel Ghafar - was commended for its performance both by other teams and the event organisers. The ANU team also won against a team of native Arabic speakers from the American University of the Emirates, which involved debating Internet censorship and democratisation.
This was the second time ANU students had participated, last competing in the event in 2013. Supported by the Qatar Foundation, the four-day biannual event seeks to unlock human potential by fostering a culture of discussion and debate, helping shape the global citizens of the future and creating the intellectual leaders of tomorrow.
The championship saw a huge increase in the number of participants this year, with 67 teams representing 33 countries competing. Teams from non-Arab speaking universities came from Australia, India, Pakistan, Brunei, Malaysia, France, Poland, China, Korea, Kazakhstan, the US and Germany.