To say that Dr. Baher Ghosheh grew up in a volatile region is an understatement.

The retired Edinboro professor was raised in a contentious section of Jerusalem, where parents, nieces and nephews were born on the same street but had different citizenship due to control by the Turks, British, Jordanians and Israelis.

Violence plagued the region as conflicts between Israeli and Arab coalitions escalated following the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948.

“If you go out and buy a loaf of bread, you don’t know if you’re going to come home,” said Ghosheh, who retired in 2022 after 26 years of service to Edinboro.

When Ghosheh was just 10 years old, working as a guide and selling bric-a-brac to tourists, his entire world changed in an instant.

As Israeli forces launched preemptive strikes in Ghosheh’s hometown – a conflict that would become known as the Six-Day War – he and nearly 100 family members and neighbors hunkered down in his grandmother’s basement.

When the first bomb struck his grandmother’s house, the second story was destroyed. With the second bomb, the entire above-ground living quarters were dismantled.

“One more bomb and a hundred of us would have been dead,” Ghosheh said. “We had nothing. We didn’t even have knives to fight with.”

Soon after, Israel took control of the region, implemented a curfew and prevented thousands of residents – including Ghosheh’s parents – from working.

“Growing up, it wasn’t that bad. You could easily move around the city,” Ghosheh said. “Now, you would think you’re in a warfront.”

Throughout this conflict, Ghosheh graduated from high school in Jerusalem and embarked upon higher education at the American University in Ankara, Turkey. However, violence and unrest would continue to follow him.

Subsidized by the U.S. government, the American University was one of the prominent institutions in the region – offering $25 tuition, $25 housing and 25-cent meals for international students. Weeks before final exams in his first semester, Ghosheh found himself in the middle of the 1980 Turkish coup d’etat, where right-wing militants infiltrated Turkey, leading to bombings on the college campus.

“I hadn’t even finished my first semester – all I needed to do was take my finals,” Ghosheh said. “I decided I couldn’t wait, since this semester might have taken two or three years to finish.”

After working in Kuwait for nearly seven months, Ghosheh relocated to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., to continue studying.

“I was studying in the Middle East at one of the best technical universities in the entire region,” he said. “Then I ended up in Mississippi, probably because I’ve read too many Ernest Hemingway novels and I believed what he was writing.”

Despite finding the city charming relative to the fiction writing, Ghosheh found that the Ole Miss region wasn’t a good fit. He moved on to the University of Buffalo, where he studied international relations and international trade.

“This time, I knew what I was getting into,” said Ghosheh, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, master’s degrees in political science and geography, and a Ph.D. in economic development from Buffalo.

With a handful of degrees, a 350-page dissertation and temporary faculty experience at Buffalo – paired with his experience with international conflict – Ghosheh decided to dig deeper into understanding regions and cultures and share his passions with the next generation of curious learners.

In 1996, Ghosheh started his tenure at Edinboro, where he developed and taught courses in world, cultural, economic, political and regional geography.

Then in 1999, Ghosheh was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study ethnic diversity and labor controversies for four months in Malaysia and Singapore. He spent his time researching and interviewing students on topics such as positive discrimination, where Malay native sons are given preferential treatment in government hiring and projects.

“Basically, your policy is blatant discrimination to favor one group,” he explained.

He also embarked on a globetrotting career that led him on travels to 60 countries and student trips to Italy, Russia, Morocco and China. During his international excursions, Ghosheh adopted a “going native” approach to visiting countries – living, eating, sleeping and traveling as a native of the country.

“It’s one thing to hear about a place or read about it. But to experience it yourself is a whole different matter,” he said. “You actually learn about the culture and interact with the people. You completely experience the environment.”

During a university trip to Japan, he taught students how to sit on the floor during meals; eat rice, raw eggs and fish; and use the public bath. In the dorms at a university in China, students encountered living situations with eight students to one room and no furniture except for beds.

“I’m hoping students realize how their lives are impacted by their environment – and how their lives impact those around them,” Ghosheh said. “We are all interdependent.”

All of this natural and developed expertise has significantly impacted the way Ghosheh sees the world and educates in the classroom. In his career, his major goal was to help students make a connection to cultures and ask three key questions: What’s there? Why is it there? And so what?

“Unless you can make the connection of why something is important and why it should matter to them, why should they care?” Ghosheh said.

In retirement, Ghosheh spends his time in Edinboro with his wife, Heather Froman, and remains active with exercise, tennis, weightlifting, traveling and writing. He’s also completing his next books dealing with the demographic trends and immigration patterns in Erie, Pa.

But as he reflects on his career and his journeys, Ghosheh realized he would never replace his connections in the classroom.

“I love teaching, and I probably would have done it for free if I didn’t have a job in the field,” he said. “It allows me to learn and grow every day. I get as much – if not more – from the students, who bring different experiences into the classroom.”