<\/p>\n
Graduate student Sarah Al Asmar immigrated from Lebanon to the United States, with plans of using her public policy degree to approach systemic issues that affect her home country.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Sarah Al Asmar<\/p>\n
When Sarah Al Asmar arrived at UCF in 2024 to pursue her master\u2019s degree in public policy, she brought more than just a desire to excel in academia.<\/p>\n
She brought the weight of lived experience; growing up in Lebanon during political and economic turmoil, and a defining moment that would shape her future career: the Beirut port explosion<\/a> of 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the explosion happened, everything changed; how I approach my personal life, the way I view the citizens, the way I view Lebanon, everything changed,\u201d Al Asmar said. \u201cI truly believe that there was a life before the explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n Al Asmar is from Jezzine, a village 25 miles south of Lebanon\u2019s capital, Beirut. At a young age, Al Asmar moved to Broummana, a town in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate. She said\u00a0that the explosion led her to pursue a degree in public policy.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m here on a Fulbright scholarship<\/a>\u00a0because I\u2019m researching how weak policymaking led to the Beirut explosion,\u201d Al Asmar explained. \u201cI want to prove that all the policymakers in Lebanon knew about the presence of the explosive material but chose to do nothing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n On Aug. 4, 2020, a major explosion tore through the Port of Beirut, taking the lives of more than 218 people. Thousands were injured and hundreds were left homeless due to the devastation. Over 2,750 tones of ammonium nitrate stored in a port warehouse were to blame, according to Al Jazeera<\/a>.<\/p>\n The National Library of Medicine<\/a> reported that Lebanese government agencies failed to adequately identify the hazard risk associated with the storage of large volumes of explosive chemicals in an urban site.<\/p>\n For Al Asmar, the explosion is one of many events that affected her life while growing up in Lebanon. When Al Asmar\u00a0was four years old, the 2006 Lebanon war between Israeli forces and the Iranian-backed militia, Hezbollah, broke out. The conflict lasted from July 12 to Aug. 15, according to EBSCO<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMy earliest childhood recollection is seeing smoke over Beirut,\u201d Al Asmar said when talking about the war. \u201cEvery few months, a bomb would go off in random towns to kill politicians and journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Lebanon is stuck in a similar conflict as Israeli forces continue to trade ballistic missile strikes with Hezbollah once again. This comes after United States and Israeli forces used missiles to strike Iranian senior officials, killing the country\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Al Jazeera<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis conflict is going on for two reasons,\u201d said Dr. Houman Sadri, a political science professor at UCF. \u201cHezbollah wants to punish Israelis for killing the supreme leader of\u00a0Iran, while Israel is targeting those Hezbollah strongholds that restarted the conflict between the two groups.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Regardless of all the turmoil that Al Asmar found herself in for most of her life, one former colleague of Al Asmar\u00a0said that she still found a way to be optimistic amidst these challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite the challenges and tensions that people in Lebanon experience, she continues to show up with optimism, commitment, and a strong work ethic,\u201d Safa Salem, a former colleague of Al Asmar, said. \u201cSarah genuinely loves her country and always keeps Lebanon at the forefront of her thinking, even when working on international projects.\u201d<\/p>\n Salem lives in Lebanon and formerly worked with Al Asmar\u00a0on Lebanese comedian John Achkar\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0content team. She believes that Al Asmar approaches everything she does with curiosity and rigor.<\/p>\n \u201cShe [Sarah] approaches everything she does with a deep sense of curiosity, rigor and responsibility,\u201d Safa said. \u201cSarah also has a rare ability to bring out the best in others.\u201d<\/p>\n