Interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.
The doors of 305 Crown Street open to a smooth expanse of olive green walls—a beautifully startling change from the faded yellow of only a couple of months earlier. The entire first floor is almost unrecognizable; uniform walls and floors illuminated by soft lights emphasize the empty, often grimy rooms and rusty door knobs of the past. A surprising change, but not unwelcome: as I open its doors on September 7, 2024, 305 Crown Street seems to stand up straighter, holding itself stiffly like a crisp new banknote—green and all.
The still-creaking door closes on me as I pause and wonder if I walked into the wrong building. My eyes fall on a single chair with wheels by the right wall. It has one of those desks that flip out from the side of the chair—on it, a small sign reading YALE Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Community. I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I stand in front of the door by the sign and try in vain to swipe my ID before going back outside to wait for the person who has access: Koosha Maleknia, TD ’26, one of the six peer liaisons for the newly relocated Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) suite.
The suite extends across the right half of the first floor, containing a kitchen, a salon, and a connecting corridor. Koosha lets us both into the kitchen, where he had offered to host our interview. “You can still kind of smell the paint everywhere,” he says. “It’s very new.” He opens the door, and I step in.
***
After more than six years of student-led activism, the MENA community finally acquired a dedicated Yale University campus space on the first floor of 305 Crown Street—an achievement so new that paint was still drying on the walls. In 2018, the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association was inaugurally led by co-presidents Shady Qubaty ’20 and Yasmin Alamdeen ’21, after the emergence of MENA-identifying student groups such as the Arab Students Association, the Persian Students Association, and the Turkish Students Association. In the fall of 2019, the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association became a recognized undergraduate organization affiliated with the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC). In the same semester, the student association hosted welcome mixers and cultural events for MENA-identifying students to widen campus visibility of the existing MENA community and their ongoing work in solidifying their representation on campus.
Although the COVID pandemic had halted the momentum of community advocacy, MENA students swiftly returned to their goals once back in person on campus. In the fall of 2022, they asked Dean Joliana Yee, Asian American Cultural Center Director & Assistant Dean of Yale College, for a potential MENA space in the cultural house. On October 28, 2022, MENA opened its two small rooms in the third-floor attic of the Asian American Cultural Center: the first space established in institutional history to accommodate the formation of Yale’s MENA community.
Two years later, on August 19, 2024, the MENA suite officially moved from its original space in the Asian American Cultural Center to 305 Crown Street, under the supervision of Assistant Director Lena Ginawni for the fall semester. In my conversations with MENA community members, students spanning across grades and heritages have reflected upon their paths in the MENA suite and what it means to have their own space. This suite has begun to plant its roots in the concrete strip of Crown Street, where La Casa, the Asian American Cultural Center, and the Native American Cultural Center line the sidewalk. However, the MENA suite differs from its neighbors: it is neither a house nor an independent building.
“We’re in our own space, which is very important, and it’s the key distinction [for] being able to classify MENA as its own identity,” said Satia Hatami, SY ’25 and peer liaison for the MENA suite. “But it’s not even a cohesive space, and I think that’s…something we’re still working towards.”
***
The arduous and unfinished process of obtaining a communal campus space for students is just a microcosm of the global pursuit of defining MENA as a region and an ethnocultural community. The classification “MENA” dates back to usage by the World Bank in 1994; yet three decades later, the MENA community still lacks a unified definition. Numerous global institutions have created their own classification: UNICEF defines the MENA region as 20 countries, spanning between Morocco and Iran, while the United Nations names only 18 of these countries. The intersectional, and often porous classifications of the MENA region crosshatch ethnicity, culture, language, religion, and history—creating challenges for an acceptance of a unified MENA cultural community, and often forcing MENA students to explain their own race category.
Although the United States Census Bureau reported that there are 3.5 million MENA-identifying people in the U.S., the Census does not name MENA as a distinct racial group. By extension, institutions that require racial identification such as the Common Application do not offer an option for MENA college applicants, forcing MENA students into the checkbox of “White/Caucasian.” Yale University was no exception to this limitation, resulting in a multitude of MENA students who had applied and matriculated to Yale under the “White/Caucasian” category. As a result, there is no administrative record of MENA-identifying undergraduates on campus.
When Noor Kareem, MY ’25, applied to Yale in the fall of 2020, there was neither a Common Application racial category nor university supplemental application racial category available to demarcate her MENA identity. “On the U.S. Census, we’ve historically just been white, and I also applied to Yale by checking the ‘White/Caucasian’ box,” a blurry Noor tells me over Zoom on September 8.. “Obviously, coming from an Iraqi origin, I do not consider myself white or Caucasian in any way.”
For MENA students, the invisibility in demographics weighs upon one’s self-perception. What is irreversibly innate to an individual is disregarded and denied; one is forced to be seen as something they are not. Now a senior and the head peer liaison for the MENA suite, Noor has experienced firsthand the journey of advocacy for proper MENA representation. The absence of her MENA identity in university applications and federal records, the breadth of student advocacy steadily rising since her first year at Yale, catching the coattails of plans from upperclassmen to create a MENA space, to now leading monumental work in the creation of a new MENA cultural center. “It’s hard to imagine how far we’ve come, and what it would’ve been for me four years ago, if I had the MENA space and community at Yale from the beginning—or the ability to identify as MENA.”
***
Sitting on the large couches in the corner of the kitchen, Koosha tells me that the MENA community’s long-standing relationship with the Asian American Cultural Center provided a sense of structure for creating a space to encompass the diversity of the MENA community. MENA-identifying students were hired at the Asian American Cultural Center as staff members, receiving organized support from a well-established, long-standing organization and building. The center now approaches its 43rd year as a central space for Asian affinity groups, and carries a culture of activism since its founding in 1981.
Having spent much of his years at Yale in the third floor of the Asian American Cultural Center, Koosha noted his appreciation for the cultural center during this period. “Of course, our Assistant Director Ginawi is the main person that we look to, but [Dean Yee and Associate Director Sheraz Oki] did a phenomenal job of helping us adjust to the Asian American Cultural Center, and support recruitment or finding MENA PLees,” Koosha says. “We were part of the team—I never felt any separation.”
Since MENA student activism emerged in the fall of 2018, the MENA community had been closely associated with the Asian American Cultural Center, constructing a relationship of financial, physical, and faculty support. After arriving at Yale in Spring 2018, Yee was heavily involved in the process of supporting Middle Eastern and North African Student Association events and initiatives to solidify their presence on campus as an official organization, such as pushing for round table discussions and contributing to outreach efforts for MENA-identifying students.
The Asian American Cultural Center peer liaisons—like those of La Casa, the AfAm House, and the Native American Cultural Center—receive lists of first-year students who have specified their race on their applications to Yale. However, MENA peer liaisons never had similar resources due to the lack of a MENA term to identify such students. Yee acknowledged limitations in the assistance she could give in the lack of established MENA resources such as these lists—Asian American Cultural Center peer liaisons worked with the MENA peer liaisons to spread word and recruit MENA-identifying first-years. “I am not MENA-identifying, so there was definitely still a lack in that sort of expertise of finding people who identified [as MENA],” Yee said. “What we could do on our end was to say, here’s the dedicated space—how do you want to use it; if you want funding, you’re an affiliate organization [of the Asian American Cultural Center], so how can you get those; let’s just continue to create programming and not let the lack of a space stop you.”
***
Although the opening of the two MENA rooms in the Asian American Cultural Center contributed to the establishment of the new suite, MENA students such as Koosha did not fully identify and feel comfortable in a space nominally dedicated to Asian Americans. “The AACC is an amazing place, but some students might look at themselves, and be like, oh, why would I waltz into the AACC and go up to the third floor, and just chill there?”
Echoing Koosha, Satia, who is Persian, explains her distance from an Asian American affiliation. “I never identified as Asian,” Satia tells me. “I’m Persian, so I would classify myself as specifically Middle Eastern. So to be associated with a space that is beautiful and so welcoming, and [where] I had such a positive experience in—despite all that, it was never my identity.”
Students such as Koosha and Satia have always had their goals firmly set for something more: a distinct cultural house. On November 30, 2023, they both participated in a community discussion at the AfAm House, uniting MENA students with members of the House, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Arab Students Association, the Persian Students Association, and Yalies4Palestine. Students emphasized the prevalence of the strong and diverse community of MENA-identifying students, who wanted a space to express their cultures and experiences. Dean Pericles Lewis, Secretary and Vice President Kimberly Goff-Crews, and Assistant Vice President Pilar Montalvo all attended this discussion to hear and acknowledge students in their efforts to establish MENA-supporting resources.
The Asian American Cultural Center houses remnants of this community discussion. Colorful Post-it notes dot large sheets of paper taped to the wall: testimonial evidence of the hardships of being MENA, reflections on the lack of a communal space to celebrate culture, and—most strikingly—student notes imagining their ideal space: Persian rugs, a kitchen counter laden with spices, literature from all MENA countries and and in all MENA languages, MENA alumni panels, culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health resources, and tea on tap with mint. A space filled with specific, warm, binding purpose; a home to be accepted in.
***
In January 2024, Yale University officially launched a search and planning committee to prepare a new space for the MENA cultural community, as well as full-time staff to support the MENA students. The University opened a position for an assistant director of the new MENA space on January 18th, a process in which Yee invited MENA-identifying students to participate. Interviews for the position began around April of 2024 and were attended by peer liaisons and other members of the MENA community. Student coordinators were also sought for the new space; interviews starting in September 2024 were held similarly to those for the assistant director. Student engagement in acquiring MENA staff has been a significant aspect of the establishment of the suite.
For Noor and other upperclassmen MENA students, the news came in disbelief: after more than six years of activism met with setbacks, the University was finally, and swiftly, constructing a designated place for the MENA community, releasing a statement in January of plans to complete the space by the fall of the same year. “We were collectively surprised at the speed in which Yale actually gave us the space and was able to build it,” Noor recalls. “I did not believe that I [was going] to see it throughout my time here at Yale. Halfway through the year, I was like ‘Oh I’m actually going to see a MENA space; it’s not this grand illusion that’s going to occur in a couple years from now.’ ”
While a sudden change, other students emphasize the long stretch of work contributing to the achievement finally coming into fruition. “It’s not true to display this MENA suite as a result of some newfound university effort,” Koosha says. “People have been pushing for this forever—it’s been a thing.”
“There’s a lot of reasons factoring into why we’re starting to see real change for the MENA community,” Satia says. “Last year, the MENA community really did not have anywhere to go to congregate, to support each other during this really difficult time for so many members of our community. We could go to the MENA rooms [in the AACC], but those are just a few rooms within a space that honestly a lot of Middle Eastern and North African students don’t necessarily feel like is their space.” Unlike other cultural centers—which serve as central locations within the context of shared identity, and provide opportunities to discuss weighted issues—MENA students did not have a safe space for community and solidarity.
Noor and Satia note that the genocide in Gaza has emphasized the need for a communal space of support and belonging for MENA-identifying students. “I can’t really speak on why Yale decided to do it now, but this space spans all of MENA, and I don’t think that the decision to create a MENA suite should be for any other reason besides the greater community at Yale,” says Koosha.
Even in September, the creation of a MENA house remains uncertain. MENA students prepare to fully decorate and establish the suite as something close to a home. It is a new process for all involved, historical for both the MENA community and other cultural centers standing firm on Crown St. “No one has ever been here at Yale to build a new cultural space—all of us inherited something that was already built,” says Dean Yee. She has been integral to the creation of both MENA spaces and for the continuing support in the growth and solidification of the community; her name peppers every conversation with the MENA PLs in reverence and appreciation.
Yee also stresses the significance of cultural centers as a place for students to celebrate their present communities, as well as work towards a future of recognition. “It’s important to have cultural centers that understand and recognize the importance of having your racialized experience be identified and supported,” Dean Yee said. “Because it is different, and it is [marginalized]. I think there’s always this sense of…solidarity, but also understanding that these advocacy pieces take time.”
***
The MENA suite opens into a room that feels barren despite the well-furnished kitchen: blank walls marked only with tape to reverse spaces for TVs; a multitude of counters and cabinets with nothing inside; a fridge free of smudge marks and stocked with just eight boxes of mango juice. Tucked against the windowsill—rows and rows of empty spice jars. The room feels larger than it really is, particularly when standing in an awkwardly uninhabited spot with nothing but smooth floorboards and blank walls. In the salon stands a black podium, tracings on its surface scraping away the light coating of dust: two jubilant stick figures dancing amidst hearts and fireworks; I heart MENA written in the corner.
The MENA suite peer liaisons underscore the unfinished work of establishing an independent cultural house. “We’re being very intentional with the words used to describe the space we’re given,” Satia tells me. “So we’ve not been calling it a house, or even a center because it’s not a house or a center—it’s very much a MENA suite. We’re still pushing for something bigger, something more complete.”
There isn’t much that declares the space as the MENA suite other than that little slip of paper and the dust on the podium. But as bare and stark as it looks, there is nothing cold about each room. Light spills across the long kitchen counter, fracturing through each spice jar—still empty, each waiting to be filled with an unashamed, unrestrained declaration of their presence. The MENA suite is waiting. Quietly, eagerly.
