BOSTON --King Abdullah II of Jordan pushed for support Thursday for the first co-educational boarding school he is setting up in the Middle East, which was inspired by his experiences at Massachusetts' Deerfield Academy.
King's Academy will be open to high school students from across the Middle East and will groom a new crop of creative and progressive leaders for the troubled region, the Jordanian ruler told a gathering of education, civil and business leaders and students at the Harvard Club in Boston.
"Because King's, like Deerfield, is more than an academic institution, we believe it can be an agent for positive change and progress," said Abdullah, who studied at the Deerfield boarding school from 1977 to 1980.
"It will be a leadership incubator -- helping to grow creative, thoughtful, achieving adults who can lead our region through the uncertainties and challenges that lie ahead," he said.
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"Humanity cannot sustain its growing divisions -- East and West, haves and have-nots, insiders and outsiders," Abdullah said. "The advancement of knowledge and collaboration among peoples of nations is really the only way forward."
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Eric Widmer, who left Deerfield last year after working for 12 years as the principal, will be King's founding principal. Deerfield has about 600 male and female students and costs about $36,000 a year.
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