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08/22/2007 A country plagued by violence and seething with anti-American rage doesn't seem like the ideal place to open an American university. But for Barham Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, it is the perfect venue. "Without providing a modern education system, this society will have a very difficult time ahead," he says. "We need a university to equip the future economic, political, and technical elite, the talent needed to build society the way we want it: a democratic society, prosperous and at peace with itself."
Mr. Salih had dreamed of building a Western-style American University of Iraq, along the lines of similar institutions in Beirut and Cairo, since he returned decades ago from his university studies in Britain. "I often wondered why Iraqis and my Kurdish compatriots could not have access to the type of education that I had," he says. He didn't waste much time after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Last summer Mr. Salih hired the consulting group McKinsey & Company to draft a business plan and assembled a high-profile board of trustees that includes Fouad Ajami, a prominent Middle East-studies professor at the Johns Hopkins University; Kanan Makiya, a Middle East-studies professor at Brandeis University; Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister of Iraq; and Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani. Mr. Salih's decision to build the university in his hometown of Sulaimaniya, in the northern Kurdish region about 150 miles from Baghdad, provoked much criticism. Some people questioned the Kurds' commitment to a unified Iraq; others said Mr. Salih was just trying to line his own pockets. Although Mr. Salih says that the relatively liberal and tolerant culture in Sulaimaniya makes it particularly suitable for a university, his decision was made almost exclusively for security reasons: The stable Kurdish region is the only place that could safely house the university at the present, and Mr. Salih didn't want to wait. "I don't want this to be an ethnic project," Mr. Salih says. "I need educated Arabs, Turkmen, and Kurds who can be molded into sharing the values about tolerance, rule of law, and economic prosperity." The university's official name is the American University of Iraq-Sulaimaniya. "When the security changes, we could have an American University in Baghdad, an American University in Basra," he says. "We hope to expand all over Iraq." Mr. Salih has been able to capitalize on his Sulaimaniya connections, raising more than $5-million from the local community alone. Both the Kurdish regional government and the U.S. Congress donated $10-million. The new campus is expected to cost $130-million in all, a sum that supporters say they should have no trouble raising. "Even though we are seeing a lot of souring about what's going on in Iraq, back in 2003, Americans really wanted to see that country liberated from tyranny," says John Agresto, the Coalition Provisional Authority's senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education from 2003 to 2004, and the only non-Iraqi on the university's Board of Trustees. "If there is a way of making a people not only gain, solidify, appreciate, and enjoy freedom, one way of doing that is a university where students can learn about the world and not get politically indoctrinated." The university broke ground this month and hopes to enroll 250 students this fall, in an English-language training program in temporary quarters. By September 2008, it expects to offer its first two degree programs, in business administration and computer systems and information technology, chosen because those are some of the skills most needed to develop the Kurdish economy. The university wants to enroll 1,000 students by 2011 and 5,000 by 2021. The American University of Iraq will also be home to a new Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and the repository for Mr. Makiya's Iraq Memory Foundation, which is documenting Hussein's atrocities. "Iraq is the center of the Middle East — we border Iran, Turkey, and the Arab world," Mr. Salih says, "so I hope we can become an amazing place where talent can come from various parts of the region to assess these very important issues of our times." Challenges Ahead The university has lined up a number of partners to bring the university up to international standards and help develop its cosmopolitan vision. Hochschule Furtwangen University, in Germany, will offer a joint M.B.A. program, and the university is in discussions with the American English Institute at the University of Oregon to run an English-preparatory program. The Italian government has agreed to donate money to set up an environmental-studies center to help redevelop the marshes in southern Iraq. The University of Vermont has been enlisted to play host to joint videoconferencing sessions between political-science classes at both universities. Topics include the separation of church and state and nationalism versus federalism. University leaders say the institution will offer a different style of teaching than Iraqis are used to. "Iraqi students feel put upon, restricted, hemmed in, confined by the rigorous professionalism, the narrowness of the Iraqi education," says Mr. Agresto. "You know your exact career for the rest of your life once you enter university. "This kind of university offers a kind of liberation, a kind of freedom," he says. Critics have raised concerns about the conspicuous presence of many prominent neoconservatives and supporters of President Bush on the university's board. Mr. Agresto, Mr. Ajami, and Mr. Makiya all supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But Owen Cargol, who was just hired to be the university's first chancellor, says politics plays no role at the university. "I have never had anyone contact me to try to move the university in any direction one way or another," says Mr. Cargol, a former president of Abu Dhabi University. "We have a very clear mission: to provide high-quality American education in English that helps develop students' critical-reasoning skills so they can be leaders in today's and tomorrow's society. The university has stayed out of politics and will continue to stay out of politics." The American University of Iraq faces a number of challenges as it moves ahead. For one, imparting a Western approach to learning will be difficult without a Western-educated faculty, and few academics are likely to want to come to a country where professors are murdered nearly every day. "Even though Kurdistan is the most peaceful region in Iraq, for most people in the world, what they see on TV is their only impression of Iraq," says Mr. Cargol. "Every candidate I interview, the first question I ask them is, Are you ready for an adventure?" The university will also have to deal with the logistical problems of transporting students from the rest of Iraq, as the situation in the center and south continues to deteriorate. "The reality is that for the first few years, we will probably attract mainly Kurds from this area," Mr. Cargol says. And the university's $10,000 yearly tuition will put it out of reach for all but the upper crust of Iraqi society. As yet there is no money set aside for scholarships. "We have always intended to be a small university aiming at a particular sector of the population — meaning the best students in the country who can afford it," says Nathan Musselman, one of the university's senior administrators. "High tuition is what comes with international standards." Still, he adds, "even if we can't let everybody in, a university like this is sure to have long-term ripple effects for all Iraqis." |
