SMU student and staff stranded in Dubai following U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran

The brochure language on the Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business website promises MBA students that "the world is your classroom," listing Dubai among gleaming destinations for short-term global immersions in international business. That world contracted violently over the weekend, after U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted Tehran to fire missiles and drones across the Persian Gulf, striking airports, hotels, and ports in the very city where Cox students and faculty are currently sheltering in place for the foreseeable future."

Local authorities continue to enforce shelter-in-place directives as regional conditions evolve," the university said in a statement Saturday. "All have confirmed they are safe," it noted.

The program, a five-to-seven-day intensive credit course that typically pairs company visits and cultural site tours with classroom lectures, was formally canceled, its web pages quietly scrubbed from the Cox site by Sunday afternoon. More than 2,400 flights were grounded across Middle Eastern airports; Emirates and Etihad suspended all operations out of the UAE. Dubai itself, usually teeming during peak winter tourist season, is basically a ghost town at present. "Our priority is to secure safe and viable travel routes rather than the fastest possible departure," university officials told WFAA in an update that carried the careful weight of institutional liability. "We understand this situation is concerning, and we ask for your patience as arrangements are underway."

The distance between the manicured walkways of SMU's David B. Miller Business Quadrangle and the closed airspace over the Gulf measured, as of Monday, somewhere around 8,000 miles, and an indefinite wait. An unexpected state of war isn’t exactly an ordeal that a global leadership curriculum accounts for.