W
by Allie Northcutt
46 W A B A S H M A G A Z I N E
ho will tell their stories?
It was a question that dawned on Philip Eubanks ’06 as he visited refugee camps spread out across Zahlé, Lebanon, at the height of the Syrian Civil War. He was working as a development officer with the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, a papal agency dedicated to giving pastoral and humanitarian support to Northeast Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and India. At that time, the organization was helping provide aid to Syrian and Palestinian refugees at local schools and hospitals. “I’ll never forget seeing a sign over the door of one of the medical clinics. In Arabic, it said, ‘Religion is for God. This clinic is for everyone,’” Eubanks recalls. “The nuns there were serving Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees, Lebanese poor, and members of Hezbollah. It was this place where critical care came first. “Seeing aid in action, I had this epiphany—if no one tells these stories, nothing happens,” says Eubanks. “Forget Human Rights Watch, International Rescue Committee, all these different service and aid organizations—if there’s not a journalist behind it in the first place, then nothing will make a difference. “The more and more I dove into press freedom issues, the more it became clear to me that if a journalist is stopped from being able to tell what’s happening in their region, then the world cannot act.” Eubanks then made it his mission to get involved with an organization that supports journalists around the world. In 2019, he joined the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as a major gifts officer. CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal, according to cpj.org. When press freedom violations occur, CPJ mobilizes
a network of correspondents who report and act on behalf of those targeted. Action can range from winning the release of imprisoned journalists and securing convictions in journalist murders to effecting positive legal reform and providing emergency support to journalists. “There’s a feeling of moving from crisis to crisis,” Eubanks says. “We’re still dealing with the aftermath of the fall of Afghanistan and will be for a while as we support journalists there. There are ongoing emergent needs out of Ethiopia and Myanmar. And since the start of the year, CPJ has already confirmed murders of journalists in Mexico. Unfortunately, these past and ongoing crises have prepared us for the Russia-Ukraine war. “The outlook is grim, to be honest. War reporting is always dangerous,” he says. “I have such admiration for the courage of journalists to bring us the news, especially local reporters for whom this moment is a story about their own neighborhoods, their own homes.” eubanks is impact driven, and it shows in the path he has taken since graduating from Wabash as a religion major and psychology minor. He earned a Master of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt University in 2009 and was on a PhD track with the goal of becoming an educator. “My dream was to come back and teach at Wabash,” says Eubanks, but after spending more time in divinity school he realized that path wasn’t for him. Eubanks signed up for the Peace Corps in 2010 and was assigned to Morocco. Living in the country for two years was an enlightening experience for Eubanks, who until taking Professor of Religion David Blix’s world religions course, had never been exposed to a world so different from what he knew growing up in Tennessee as a “Bible Belt southern boy.” “I learned Moroccan Arabic and was fascinated with the Muslim world,” says Eubanks. “Being able to live in Morocco really opened my eyes.
Philip Eubanks ’06 (holding camera) and his colleague, Chris Kennedy, showing photos to Syrian refugees in a school CNEWA was supporting.
“I was a senior in high school when “I think his passion is for justice, September 11 happened. I had a very transparency, and democracy, which in a preconceived notion of what Islam was that way, is what he was looking for in the Peace was steeped in everything that happened Corps—seeing the world and recognizing around that terrorism attack. That was my what’s worth fighting for,” says Royalty. first encounter with Islam. I took those “He’s perfectly melded that passion with his young eyes, that hadn’t yet learned critical profession in fundraising, and that takes thinking, and a decade later, moved to a hard work in the nonprofit world. That place where I was learning Arabic,” Eubanks work is very important right now because says and then pauses, thinking about the journalism worldwide is in crisis.” host family who welcomed him as their own while he lived in the North African country. “My host mother, Fatima, didn’t know English at all, but she made a point to learn one phrase: ‘I love you. You are my son.’ And she gave me the biggest hugs,” Eubanks recalls. “All those preconceived notions I had of Islam were shattered, right then and there. “The time I spent there and the friends I made, both in the Peace Corps and Morocco, were powerful experiences in a lot of ways and inspired me to take the next steps forward in life to live more humanely.”
“I’ll never forget seeing a sign over the door of one of the medical clinics. In Arabic, it said, ‘Religion is for God. This clinic is for everyone,.’”
professor of history and religion
Bob Royalty remembers Eubanks as a good student who was attentive in classes and eager to learn more about the world. “Philip was always all in and committed,” says Royalty. “I could see that he was figuring things out and opening up his world.” Royalty has kept in contact with Eubanks over the years, and has noticed his former student’s passion develop even more as he traveled and discovered cultures “outside of the traditional religious worldview that he grew up with.”
Blix echoes Royalty’s remarks and says the work Eubanks is doing now with the Committee to Protect Journalists, is “just extraordinary and an act of great courage.” “Journalists today are really fighting against great odds, and he’s out there fighting for them and with them,” says Blix. “He’s a young man who is an advocate for truth.” fundraising, says eubanks, is especially difficult during this time in history with the ongoing pandemic and the increasing need to protect journalists and defend press freedom.
WABASH.EDU
47
