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Best Practices for Times of Conflict |
This discussion board has been created for campuses to share what you are doing to assist U.S. students abroad and international students on U.S. campuses during the current conflict.
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To keep you up to date on current developments that impact international exchange, IIENetwork will occasionally post relevant articles as they appear in the news. However, this message board has been primarily created to encourage discussion among IIENetwork members. We invite you to share what you are doing to assist U.S. students abroad and international students on U.S. campuses during the current conflict, and welcome your comments regarding the impact of the war on your campus, and any other issues related to international education.
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Rebuilding Iraqi Higher Education -- Chronicle Article 4/25 |
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You are here: Discussion Board: Best Practices for Times of Conflict > Rebuilding Iraqi Higher Education -- Chronicle Article 4/25
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Subject:
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Rebuilding Iraqi Higher Education -- Chronicle Article 4/25 |
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Posted By:
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switherell
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Date Posted:
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4/24/03
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The following article, "Preparing to Rebuild Iraq's Universities," which provides a variety of viewpoints on the role of U.S non-profits, universities and the U.S. Government in rebuilding Iraqi higher education systems, appears in the April 25 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Discussion: Please post your thoughts on what universities can/should do to assist in this rebuilding process, and let your colleagues on this discussion board know of any new programs or initiatives that your institution is undertaking.
(If you subscribe to the Chronicle, you can also access the article on-line at this link:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i33/33a04201.htm)
Sharon Witherell
Director, Public Affairs
IIE
==================================================
Chronicle of Higher Education
International
From the issue dated April 25, 2003
Preparing to Rebuild Iraq's Universities
American organizations seek to help some of the world's most repressed
and isolated academics
By DANIEL DEL CASTILLO
Saddam Hussein stripped Iraqi universities of intellectual freedom and
scared away their best professors. The oil embargo deprived many
universities of the most basic resources, and then stray bombs and
looters moved in to further the destruction. Now a handful of
international-education organizations, the U.S. government, and Iraqi
expatriates are deciding how to rebuild the nation's higher-education
systems.
Some are motivated primarily by the lure of securing multimillion-dollar
contracts. Others are interested in establishing an intellectual
footprint in an Arab state with a rich cultural heritage that has been
largely out of bounds to American scholars and colleges since the late
1970s.
The American government will be controlling plans to rehabilitate the
Iraqi educational infrastructure through the Pentagon's Office for
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, with help from the State
Department and the United States Agency for International Development.
Planning for Iraq's future started four months ago, and this month AID
began to award contracts for the reconstruction of elementary and
secondary education in Iraq. Planning for higher education is still
under way.
The State Department, through its Future of Iraq project, convened a
working group, composed primarily of Iraqi-American scholars, in
January. The meeting's aim was to devise strategies to rebuild education
and to promote democracy through educational efforts. A second session,
intended to focus exclusively on higher education and to draft specific
recommendations, was planned but has yet to be convened.
Those interested in helping the rebuilding believe that the United
States will be at the forefront of the effort for quite some time.
"Everyone expects that the U.S. government is going to be certainly the
largest, most important, most significant, and most well-funded player
in the reconstruction effort," says Thomas Hill, program coordinator for
the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.
The center, which sponsors teaching, research, and fieldwork on
resolving deadly conflicts, coordinates an academic consortium that aids
the three universities in northern Iraq that are under Kurdish control.
Iraq's universities were once the pride of the Arab world, producing
some of the region's best-known scholars, poets, mathematicians, and
scientists. Iraq has 13 universities, not including the three under
Kurdish control. The Kurdish universities closed for the war but were
scheduled to reopen last week.
Three major wars within the last 20 years and a decade of sanctions have
effectively crippled Iraqi universities. Those who have monitored higher
education in Iraq say an estimated 30 percent of the country's
professors -- including many of the most talented -- fled when they had
a chance. "The golden era of Iraqi higher education was in the '70s and
early '80s," says Maen Nsour, regional program manager for Arab
education at the United Nations Development Program. "What really hurt
them was when Iraqi professors started leaving Iraq in the early '90s.
They ended up in universities all over the world, not just the Arab
world."
The scholars who did remain in Iraq had no research opportunities, no
money, and a scarcity of basic resources. Computer-science professors
often had to teach without computers. Many faculty members resorted to
selling their private libraries just to survive. "Almost all faculty at
the university level were busy trying to get bread to eat rather than
getting papers published. There was so much inflation that professors'
salaries are equivalent to $10 per month," says Edward Odisho, a former
professor of linguistics at Al-Mustansiriya University, in Baghdad, who
fled the country in 1980 and now teaches in the college of education at
Northeastern Illinois University. Mr. Odisho says one of the main
challenges ahead will be to deal with the ideological curriculums,
especially in the social sciences.
Cult Participation
Iraqi schools and universities were forced, under the rule of
then-President Hussein and the Baath Party, to participate in the Iraqi
leader's cultish self-veneration. Professors had to tutor the children
of Baath Party officials. When Mr. Odisho taught at Al-Mustansiriya
University, he had to vote for a faculty union that was an extension of
the Baath Party, and in which all candidates were party officials.
Cameras recorded the elections to make sure that all faculty members
participated. In a silent act of rebellion, Mr. Odisho once took a pen
that had no ink to the election, and slid a blank ballot into the box.
"There should be a de-Baathification of the textbooks, and immediately,"
says Mr. Odisho. "Even if it means throwing those books away or deleting
the materials in them."
"Iraq needs to be liberated not just administratively but educationally
from the fascist and racist policies that have been implemented during
the 30 years," he says.
College faculty members were recruited into the army, he says. "They
went for military training and many of the professors used to come to
class with their fatigues on."
Kurdish Renaissance
In contrast to the bulk of Iraqi universities, which were under the
control of Mr. Hussein, the three Kurdish-controlled institutions in the
north of the country have prospered under the de facto independence the
region has enjoyed for a decade. "They are thriving in a sense, but it's
a relative term. The faculty are underpaid and undertrained," says Diane
King, a Kurdish-studies scholar at the American University of Beirut,
who was the first foreigner to teach at the University of Dohuk, a
Kurd-ish university near the Iraqi border with Turkey. "There are two
stories to tell: Everyone is aware of how far they have to go, but if
you look at how far they've come, that's amazing too," she says.
Ms. King says the Kurds were especially adept at designing academic
programs within the universities that had direct relevance to the needs
of the region, including the establishment of a medical school in Dohuk.
"Our hope certainly is to do everything we can to work with the
universities and to support them," Columbia's Mr. Hill says. "We also
want to help with the reintegration with universities in the rest of
Iraq and continue to help them build connections between them and
universities in the north of Iraq and internationally."
Universities and international organizations involved in higher
education are devising plans for how they hope to participate in the
reconstruction, but many are waiting for AID to request proposals and
bids before they develop specific programs.
Although the U.S. government doesn't yet have a reconstruction plan for
Iraqi higher education, one of the components expected to be announced
in the next week or so is a university partnership program that would
allow American universities to establish exchanges and cooperative
ventures with Iraqi universities through AID grants.
Campus Looting
A substantial amount of AID money has already been allocated to help
rebuild university infrastructures, although the exact dollar amount
won't be determined until an on-the-ground assessment is made.
Television reporters and news photographers have shown looters carrying
computer monitors from the grounds of the University of Basra, marines
fighting Iraqi soldiers on the University of Baghdad campus, and a huge
crater on the campus of Al-Mustansiriya University, now part of the
University of Baghdad.
Looting was also reported at the University of Tikrit. "We have no idea
at this stage what we're dealing with in terms of the situation on the
ground," said Luke Zahner, an AID spokesman. "This isn't just war damage
from the current conflict. This is general decay that's happened over
the past 20 to 30 years."
The Pentagon has made it clear that it wants to demilitarize
universities and expunge Baathist ideology from the system. "There are
plans to work with Iraqis on the ground as quickly as possible to make
sure the various ministries are up and running but also reformed to make
sure they're being run and operated in a manner that's conducive to a
democratic state, not a single-party dictatorship," Mr. Zahner says.
'Negative Vibe'
Some American philanthropic organizations are hesitant to cooperate with
the Pentagon. "Quite frankly, there is a very negative vibe about the
whole enterprise," says an American program director for a foundation,
who asked not to be identified. "Higher education is based on academic
independence and distancing oneself from the mechanisms of control."
The military nature of the occupation is a concern for some academics as
well. "There is a bit of a foreboding feeling among a lot of people
about the U.S. being an occupying force, and that's something that could
be problematic in a lot of areas, higher education being one of them,"
Mr. Hill says. For the center he represents, the issue is less vexing,
given the support for the war among the Iraqi Kurds who control the
northern universities.
AID officials dismissed the concerns.
"We've heard mutterings about this in the press, but in terms of our
cooperation with the [nongovernmental-organization] community and
universities, it's been ongoing since October and we envisage them
playing a very significant part in what we're doing," says Mr. Zahner,
the AID spokesman.
Many organizations are waiting to see what AID and other agencies have
in mind before committing to specific programs. "We're looking for
opportunities, but a big key for us is to make sure a role we would play
would be something that is well integrated into an overall plan and that
has significant Iraqi participation in terms of determining what the
goals are," says Leslie S. Nucho, vice president of programs for
Americans at Amideast, which has a 50-year history of working with
universities and students in North Africa and the Middle East, providing
educational exchanges, academic advising, and testing facilities for
college-placement exams. "It's difficult to see how any meaningful
development work can be done without the wholehearted participation of
the beneficiaries."
Amideast would like to set up a field office in Iraq, and Ms. Nucho says
she thinks that the organization could help to develop Iraqi faculty
members, to provide English-language training, and to create new
curriculums.
The Institute of International Education, which administers the
Fulbright scholars program, convened a brainstorming session last month
to examine what immediate and long-term initiatives it could take in
Iraq.
"We would like to get out in front of AID," says Allan E. Goodman, the
institute's president. "We discovered there are lots of lessons from
other places and lots of resources available."
Transformation Plans
Mr. Goodman said the first task will be to conduct an assessment of the
condition of Iraqi universities, and to restore integrity to the
admissions and grading processes, and then to determine which subjects
can be taught that will immediately benefit from online resources, such
as the OpenCourseWare project at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. The goal of the assistance, he says, would be to get some
university departments up and running for a fall term.
The institute envisions eventually setting up educational exchanges with
Iraqi institutions, although the State Department would have to
authorize such programs first.
Institute staff members have been meeting with Iraqi expatriates and
looking for ways to integrate them into higher education in Iraq. "We
have a huge reservoir of Americans, some of whom are Iraqi, we can call
upon to help in reconstituting the university system. We're asking if
they would be willing to teach for a short time or do professor updating
and training," Mr. Goodman says.
"If funds were unlimited this could happen far faster than you could
build roads or restore power generation. I think the education sector,
because it depends on human capital more than anything else, could very
quickly be transformed."
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