Coming Back to School

They fled after 9/11. But now thousands of Saudi students are attending U.S. colleges again

When Talal Al-Dehaim's friends learned last summer that he was leaving Saudi Arabia to go to college in the U.S., they told him it might not be a good idea. Attending an American school had been almost a rite of passage for ambitious Saudis, but after the 9/11 attacks and the discovery that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from the desert kingdom, many Saudi students, as well as those from other Arab and Muslim countries, rushed home fearful of repercussions. Few filled their places. As he made the long journey from Riyadh to Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., al-Dehaim, 18,...

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