Travel Abroad Greece 2022: The Ugly

The Ugly

When I signed up to do the study abroad program to go to Athens, Greece, for a week with my very liberal, social justice focused R1 university, I had no idea the racism that I would witness and struggle against because of the outrageous organization we'd be working with. Athens Institute for Education and Research, ATINER, and its president Dr. George Poulos is homophobic, racist, and sexist. While I realize that I have an outsider's perspective, and I am a guest in this country, my university had an obligation to the 35 people it brought to Greece to ensure their safety and well-being. Part of that is briefing the potential students about the highly conservative nature of the organization we'd be working with. Part of it is making it crystal clear that schools here are part of the ministry of education AND religion. Though truly, part of it is picking an organization to work with that aligns with the values of the university. If they cannot be matched, these stated values should be a clear sign that this might not be the right time to visit a particular country. Another option is to tell students what we'd be facing and then let students decide. The reality is that we took over twenty-five women, mostly women of color, as well as men, queer people, and nonbinary folx to the other side of the world and put them in harm's way. 

I am disappointed.

From ATINER's website

The following is a short list of some of the things that George said:

• Don't go to Mykonos; there are gay men there, and on the island of Lesbos there are gay women.
• The schools in the city are terrible.
• Ask questions of substance. That's not a question of substance.
• If you have a Ph.D. and you're greek? Then we will hire you. If you aren't Greek, why would we hire you?
• Immigrants are ruining the schools.
• We know by first grade pretty much how you will turn out.
• Either you have the stuff or you don't. 
• Success is all about hard work.
• Women getting into STEM and trying to be like men is actually hurting women
• Going to the islands is Mickey Mouse stuff; we want you to do educational stuff.

And then there were the "slave" comments. Multiple times he said that people were like "slaves." He said that people were behaving like "rowdy slaves" and that he would lock the door and "trap" them like "slaves." He said that we were uncouth beasts. 

At one point, he didn't want us to leave before hearing the guest speakers, so he told us that there was an emergency outside and we shouldn't leave the building. This, it turned out, was a joke. This, when we were already worried about the police we'd seen and the political unrest in the country.

There are so many microaggressive and aggressive comments made that I am sure I am forgetting something. It got to the point on our final night that students were coming up and telling our co-directors the latest "slave" comments. It reached a fevered pitch, and our co-directors said we could leave, but they felt obligated to stay and hear the university guest speakers.

My advice, and in the interest of the program, was to go apologize to the guest speakers and tell them that in the interest of our students' safety, we wouldn't be staying. That the president of ATINER was making racist and violent comments, and we wanted to think of our students and the reputation of our program. Instead, they ultimately chose to stay, telling students that if they felt uncomfortable or unsafe that they could leave and go back to the hotel and that this wouldn't count against their grade for the class. I disagreed with this decision, and I did everything I could to try to persuade them, as a white person, to understand the damage this was doing to the other students. Ultimately, we did stay. Most of the students did too, so perhaps this was the correct choice? But I am not sure.

It seems that Olga, the person the codirectors had spoken with following the latest slave comments, had told George about our concerns and/or complaints. When George came out to do a five-minute closing, he spoke at length about the definition of the word slave and how it meant that you had a job and therefore wasn't a bad thing (in terms of the Ancient Greeks). He said that he had his own philosophy and values and that his school accepted all people even if he did not agree with them or that his values were against them. He said he was free to feel this way because his program represented freedom, and then began to tell jokes about a child named Freedom to lighten the mood. It did not work.

When he asked the codirectors how many would be coming to give feedback tomorrow and was told two because our director was still sick, he said he would force him to come. He went on to call him a slave too. One of our Black female students bravely raised her hand, then put it down and loudly said, "don't use that word anymore. It's not a good word. Don't say, slave. We don't like it. It isn't okay to say. stop saying it, wipe it from your vocabulary, and never say it again." 

George looked shocked. He blinked. He stood in front of his mic for a long time and blinked at us. After a few seconds, he said that he would and that "they have never said that before." He seemed to laugh about it. Later, I heard that he continued to say "slave" and make jokes about it all.

This reminds me so much of what I've heard and seen of Trump. We do, as people have reminded me frequently when speaking about George, have people like him back in America. This is not a Greek phenomenon. However, the idea of bringing this particular group here in an attempt to work with his organization is shocking.