Alumni Spotlight on Ramah Kudaimi

Ramah Kudaimi ’03 has two vivid memories of the days following September 11, 2001. One is going home from school and seeing a television news report of her mosque in Bridgeview being vandalized. The other is the safety she felt at the Academy and the thoughtful discussions about the event with her classmates, especially in Ms. Concannon’s geography class.

“Some of my Muslin friends who attended suburban schools felt like they were the ‘other.’  I never felt there was an ‘other’ here at the Academy. I was lucky to have attended MPA and to be shielded from what other Muslim families experienced,” she said.

September 11 impacted her in even deeper ways. “The events of those days convinced me that working toward issues of social justice and peace was something that makes sense.” Upon graduating from the Academy in 2003, she attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, focusing on media studies, international relations, and history. While there, she studied abroad at the American University in Cairo.                                     

The experience changed her life. “Experiencing for the first time such utter poverty in Cairo opened my eyes to the same issues when I returned to Chicago,” she said. While at Northwestern, she co-founded Peace of Mind, the school’s first Muslim-Jewish dialogue group. From this experience, she said she learned that “there are no right or wrong narratives—only different ones. And there are individuals on all sides who want peace, despite the objections of those who get wrapped up in their own position and don’t want to see other viewpoints.”  

Since graduating from Northwestern in 2007, Ramah has studied at the School of Diplomatic Sciences and International Relations at the University of Kalamoon in Deratiah, Syria. She is currently employed by AmeriCorps, a national service organization where she is affiliated with the Arab-American Action Network in Chicago. One of her primary responsibilities is organizing and facilitating presentations on Arab culture for local schools, libraries, and other public institutions.

 She says she is most proud of her interactions with Chicago-area Latino, Arab, and African-American youth. “Through dialogue and discussion, we educate them about social justice issues by linking together various conflicts around the world to see how similar they are. We need to talk about these issues more.”

Ramah’s commitment to peace and improving relationships among different cultures and religions will take her to the nation’s capital in January when she begins a graduate program in conflict resolution at Georgetown University. “I believe the way we look to solve problems in our world today tends to focus on governments and politicians instead of investing in people who are truly affected by violence,” she notes. “I hope to gain insight into how we could involve more grassroots efforts in ending conflicts.”  

She adds that her life’s experiences so far—including those at the Academy—have taught her to have an understanding of people different from those with whom she grew up. She explains, “once you are exposed to environments and people you are not used to, you gain an appreciation of the issues affecting others and might discover that you have a passion for such issues and would want to be a leader in dealing with them.”

Despite current gridlock regarding Middle Eastern peace, Ramah remains optimistic that peace is ultimately possible. “The people on both sides are ahead of the government in terms of advocating peace,” she says. “History is on our side.”