Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [91]
Throughout the Middle East there are many private schools for the children of the elite, who show up in their chauffeur-driven Mercedes, cell phones clamped to their ears. But there are no schools in the Deerfield tradition, open to all talented young people and offering scholarships for those unable to afford the fees. I wanted to create a new tribe in a region often riven by ethnic and sectarian conflict: the tribe of the talented meritocracy.
Back in Jordan, I immediately began to work on turning this vision into reality. Safwan Masri, a Jordanian expatriate teaching at Columbia University in New York, was invited to lead the project, and I convinced my good friend Gig, who at the time was a senior banker at Citigroup, to help with fund-raising. Over the next few years, Safwan, Gig, and a small team worked hard to raise money, locate a site, and choose an architect to bring the project to life.
We found a perfect spot just outside Madaba, fifteen miles south of Amman. This is the location, at the Greek Orthodox Basilica of St. George, of the sixth-century Madaba Mosaic Map, one of the earliest maps of the Holy Land. The site we selected for the school was on the historic King’s Highway, an ancient trade route that ran from Heliopolis in Egypt across the Sinai to Aqaba, turned north through Jordan, and continued on to Damascus, ending at Resafa on the banks of the Euphrates.
We began construction on July 22, 2004. But I was well aware that if I really wanted to re-create the spirit of Deerfield, I would need more than buildings. Eric Widmer, the school’s fourth headmaster since 1902, was due to retire from Deerfield in 2006. This was my chance. I managed to persuade him to be the founding headmaster of King’s Academy.
When I returned to Deerfield for my twenty-fifth reunion in 2005, my classmates were excited to hear the news of King’s Academy, and I invited them all to visit Jordan. That August nearly one hundred classmates and their family members traveled to Madaba to see the new school for themselves and to tour the country. For many it was their first trip to the Middle East, and all commented on the warm and generous reception of the Jordanian people. Proving that the spirit of the class of 1980 remained strong, they raised over $1 million for King’s Academy. To this day they continue to provide strong support for the school, dedicating time and money to its growth and success.
The next year I was again invited to be the commencement speaker at Deerfield, and gladly accepted. On May 28, 2006, I stood in the green-and-white-striped tent, once more looking out at a crowd of jubilant young men and women. Eric Widmer, presiding over his last convocation as headmaster, turned to me during his introduction and said, “I am tempted to introduce you as my new boss, then I’m tempted to say you have to be nice to me even so, because of the likelihood I will be overseeing the education of your children.” Indeed, it was my dream that my children, joined by young boys and girls from Jordan and the region, would soon draw the same kind of inspiration from King’s Academy that I had received from Deerfield.
In my remarks I stressed the importance of building unbreakable links between America and the Middle East and spoke of my dreams for King’s Academy. “We want to bring the Deerfield model to the Middle East,” I explained, “a coed boarding school where faculty and students are close, academic studies greatly encouraged, and life enriched with competitive sports, lively arts, and real community service.” To give our students the best chance of competing in the modern global economy, we decided that we would follow the American Advanced Placement curriculum, and all teaching would be in English. We would also offer classes in classical Arabic, grammar, and literature, as