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Kyle Custis Allen ’05, who is spending the next year in the United Arab Emirates as a newly minted Fulbright Student, credits William Paterson University with helping him acquire the skills he needs for the prestigious fellowship.
“At William Paterson I was immediately immersed in the University’s cultural diversity,” he says. “I made friends of the Jewish and Islamic faiths. I had roommates who were born and raised in Africa. My upbringing in Montana could not have prepared me for such friendships, but an open mind helped to cement, perpetuate, and proliferate these friendships.”
A transfer student who came to William Paterson under the National Student Exchange program, he studied Arabic under Professor Soulaiman Jendi, who was among the many professors who inspired him to succeed academically. “The professors who instructed me lit a fire for education in me, and I devoted myself to my studies. I went from being a “C” student to an “A” student at William Paterson, and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English. I attribute the change to engaging, caring, and inspiring professors and support staff, and a renewed mind concerning my education.”
A 2009 graduate of the Villanova University School of Law, he spent the last year working as an attorney for a law firm in Philadelphia, representing the cases of refugees seeking asylum, and as a law clerk in the criminal trial division at the Court of Common Pleas in York County, Pennsylvania.
He was awarded the 2010 Fulbright fellowship to work with the federal court system and conduct legal research in the Persian Gulf country. He is one of 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel under this year’s program. Fulbright Awards are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and are designed to increase mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries.
Allen’s research will concentrate on the development of the concept of federalism embodied within the constitution of the United Arab Emirates.
To linguistically prepare him, he was also awarded a Critical Language Enhancement Award to study Arabic in a language immersion course in Cairo, Egypt at the beginning his fellowship. Following that, Allen will be based at the United Arab Emirates University--College of Law, located in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
To achieve his project goals, he will be working, on a part-time basis, as a consultant to the UAE’s Supreme Court and its federal judiciary. Academically, he plans to conduct a comparative analysis of the UAE constitution and the U.S. constitution, and culturally, he plans to “engage local Emirati’s and promote cross-cultural understanding by holding pro-bono legal seminars among other informational initiatives.”
