Iran War Shifts Plans for Student Travel to the Middle East

Uriel Lin ’28, a student from the small agricultural town Beit El’azari, Israel, and president of the Princeton Israeli Community, is the youngest of five siblings and an aunt to eight nephews and nieces under age 8, all of whom live in Israel.

The war in Iran profoundly changed her experience at Princeton during the spring semester, she said. Her parents spent long hours in a small pantry shelter with their grandchildren while rockets landed close to their home, and Lin felt the strain of balancing coursework with concerns for her family’s safety.

“It renders whatever computer science algorithm you’re learning less significant,” she said.

Lin was planning to fly home after completing a Princeton summer course in Toledo, Spain, that ends June 30. Now, those plans are uncertain. As of May, many flights to and from Israel have been canceled or suspended.

“It’s very volatile,” she said. “When you evaluate whether to go back home, you’re also evaluating, what are the chances that I won’t be able to go out?”

Travel throughout the Middle East has been disrupted, impacting how some Princeton students approach their summer plans. In late March, the Office of International Programs canceled all undergraduate International Internship Programs (IIPs) in Jordan and Qatar, including at the Al Quds Center for Political Studies in Jordan, the Amman Institute of Performing Arts, the Collateral Repair Project in Jordan, Engicon in Jordan, Medical Aid for Palestinians in Jordan, and the Qatar Computing Research Institute.

According to University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill, the office notified affected students immediately and provided next steps and information about seeking support from their internship advisers.

“While IIP advisers do their best to point students whose internships have been canceled by Princeton to other opportunities, each student’s circumstances and goals are specific to them and IIP cannot provide an alternative placement,” Morrill said in an email to PAW.

According to Chris Holmes, director of Global Safety and Security (GS&S), risk varies across the region, even within individual countries, and assessments often involve close coordination with individual travelers.

“We work directly with [students] to understand the purpose of travel, walk through their plans, identify where things could break down, and put reasonable mitigation measures in place,” Holmes said in an email to PAW.

In active conflict zones, conditions can shift rapidly, impacting airspace, transportation routes, and overall stability in parts of the region. GS&S monitors these changes in real time and adjusts internal assessments and guidance as needed, adding additional precautions, closer engagement with travelers, or changes to how certain trips are reviewed.

For higher-risk destinations, students are required to complete a formal exception process. During major geopolitical events, GS&S sees an increase in outreach from students about travel risks and contingency plans.

Some students are moving forward with opportunities in regions deemed safer. Eitan Gelb ’28 said he still plans to be in Israel from the end of June through early August for a biotechnology internship at the Hadassah Cancer Research Institute in Jerusalem. Although GS&S initially classified Gelb’s destination as a Category C (higher-risk international destinations) based on factors including the political, security, and economic environment, it was upgraded to Category B (medium-risk international destinations) on April 10.

PAW reached out to seven academic departments, all of which either had no information to share about students traveling to the region or did not respond to a request for comment.

Emily Phillips ’28 had planned to travel to Israel on a Birthright Israel trip but instead decided to remain in the United States and interview for internships domestically. Rabbi Eitan Webb, co-founder of Princeton’s Chabad House, said these decisions often come down to personal risk tolerance. “Be curious, be smart, be safe,” he said.

According to Gregory Bell, a lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the summer Arabic study adviser, requests for recommendations to Arabic programs in the region are “way down” this year, even as Princeton’s first-year Arabic cohort has grown to more than 30 students.

“We actually had more people enrolling, but at the same time, the opportunities are fewer, because … programs in some of these places just aren’t running,” he said.

He pointed to the Critical Language Scholarship Program as one example: Last year, summer Arabic programs were offered in Oman, Morocco, and Jordan, with a virtual option connected to Egypt. This year, the summer program is only in Morocco. Bell said he has heard of a few students traveling to Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan outside the Critical Language program.

Without traveling to the region, he said, “you’re not going to experience the culture firsthand, and you’re not going to see things that you’ll never see again in your life. ... We teach dialects to a certain extent, but that’s hard to replicate.”