The American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS) and the Yemen Center for Studies and Research, the organization that grants research permits to foreign scholars, organized a symposium on the long-term impact of foreign education for the first Yemenis to study abroad. Focusing primarily on the "famous forty" who in the 1950's were the very first Yemenis to study abroad, the symposium organizers invited all those of that first generation to study abroad to participate. The conference was a celebration of the lives and careers of these men, providing a forum in which they discussed the experience of their education outside Yemen as well as their own subsequent place in Yemen’s intellectual, institutional and political history.

The symposium, which was held March 5th and 6th, 2005, resulted from research conducted by Dr. Robert D. Burrowes while he held a special U.S. Department of State/Bureau of Educational and Culural Affairs-funded senior fellowship through AIYS and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. The article on the “famous forty” he produced during his 2003-04 fellowship tenure was translated into Arabic and distributed to all participants prior to the symposium. Dr. Burrowes was the primary speaker at the plenary session of the symposium, which was under the sponsorship of Dr. Abd al-Karim Al-Iryani (past Prime Minister of Yemen and presently Senior Advisor to the President and General Secretary of the ruling Congress Party). Several smaller more informal sessions will follow. It is intended that the proceedings of the symposium will be published in Arabic and English. In addition the tape recordings of the symposium discussions will be archived at YCSR as being primary documents of Yemeni oral history.

Read an article about the symposium from the Yemen Observer here.