A Notre Dame political science professor had the unique opportunity last month to teach students about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in a place where such terms are foreign and difficult to grasp.
Professor Vincent Muñoz traveled to the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani (AUI-S) to teach students about the principles behind the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
"The ideas were new and not familiar. They really wanted to know what it means to have the right to life, the right to liberty," Muñoz said.
AUI-S, a private university, opened in 2007 and offers an American-style liberal arts education. All classes are taught in English.
Muñoz met AUI-S Provost John Agresto last November after the Notre Dame professor gave a lecture about the Constitution in Philadelphia. Agresto later invited Muñoz to teach students about American democracy in a workshop setting at AUI-S.
Muñoz left for Iraq on March 25 and returned on April 5, traveling 30 hours each way. Notre Dame's Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) funded the trip.
"I definitely want to thank Agustin Fuentes, director of the ISLA," Muñoz said.
On a typical day, Muñoz did some of his own work in the morning, ate lunch with faculty in the afternoon, met with his class and held informal conversations with students after class.
"I taught for five days, but the total trip was 10 days," Muñoz said. "I taught a 75 minute class which tended to go to 90 minutes. Anyone could come, and more students came every day."
Muñoz said the students arrived at each seminar class well prepared and with many questions.
"The first day we did the Declaration of Independence and [discussed] what the purpose of government is. The second day we did the Federalist Number 10. [We then] spent two days on religious freedom and one day on constitutional design," Muñoz said. "Students were so engaged because Iraq just wrote a constitution."
Muñoz said most students looked to America as the ideal democratic society.
"[We discussed that] liberal democracy has its advantages and disadvantages," he said.
"They are so enamored with the idea of democracy, to have someone talk about the disadvantages of democracy was new to them."
Muñoz said some female students worried about the abuses of freedom. These students were concerned too much freedom could lead to an increased prevalence of abortions and pornography.
Toward the end of his stay in Iraq, Muñoz gave a lecture open to the entire university titled "Constitutional Democracy and Religious Freedom."
"In the lecture I did a comparison between the Iraqi and American constitutions," Muñoz said. "Islam is the established religion in the Iraqi constitution. I compared that to how we don't have an official religion in America. Students thought it would be impossible not to have an established religion [In Iraq]."
Muñoz said students were surprised a separation of church and state is not considered anti-religious. They also struggled to comprehend the idea of a limited government.
"They had not seen the arguments for these ideas before," Muñoz said.
Muñoz said his class felt "in many ways, just like a seminar at Notre Dame."
But he said teaching students who are so unfamiliar with concepts like freedom of speech and freedom of religion — concepts most Americans do not think twice about — was refreshing.
"[The trip] reminded me why I love to teach these things, because the students were so hungry to learn and the ideas were so new to them," Muñoz said. "The eagerness of the students was infectious — they desire so much to live as a stable democracy like America."
