The goal of the two-day conference, entitled ‘‘Transcending Borders: Asia, Middle East, and the Global Community,” was to provide a platform for western and Asian scholars to converge and exchange views on major issues concerning the Middle East and its relationship with Asia, the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The conference was made up of 19 roundtable discussions falling under three main areas of interest – ‘‘Identity in Shifting Contexts,” ‘‘Trans-Regional Exchange and Challenges,” and ‘‘Human Security and Stability.” Scholars presented their papers before fielding questions and discussions from the other participants in each roundtable.

The forum invited scholars with strong interest and specializations in Asia-Middle East relations to present papers on a multitude of subjects, including energy and the environment, economy and trade, cross-regional relations, and social and cultural perspectives. Participants included academics, diplomats, military officers and Midshipmen.

Midn. 2⁄C David Ritchey is a political science major currently taking a class entitled ‘‘Islam and Politics.” While attendance at the conference was mandatory for the class, Ritchey said his own personal interests encouraged him to attend.

‘‘We’re studying how Islam is not a monolith, therefore you can’t really categorize all Muslims as being the same,” said Ritchey. ‘‘The conference, with its theme of ‘Transcending Borders,’ showed how there’s Muslims in all different parts of the world and they all think differently. It was interesting to see a lot more variety of viewpoints than you would see just from reading the news.”

The central point of the conference was to show that while the United States was deeply involved in negotiating peace between Israel and the Palestinians and fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia were developing frequent economic, political and cultural interactions with the Middle East.

‘‘There was one presentation where the presenter talked about Chinese Muslims and their use of the Internet as an organizational tool. That’s something you don’t really think of when you think of Muslims – you don’t think of China – so it was interesting to hear what he had to say,” Ritchey said.

Countries such as China and Japan pay close attention to the Middle East because of their strong ties to the region, and one of the premises of the conference was that their roles in the Middle East have become so prominent that they should be acknowledged and closely observed.

‘‘Now that the Middle East is a hot spot and it looks like we’ll have U.S. forces involved there for awhile to come, I think it’s important for future leaders to have accurate conceptions of the people they’ll be interacting with,” said Ritchey. ‘‘Learning about what they believe helps you to understand how they behave and why they behave that way. It will help to create a dialogue.”