Interestingly, there are a couple of different articles today on US education assistance for Saudi Arabia and Saudis.
The New York Times runs a piece, along the lines of the The Los Angeles Times article cited last week and an article in the Contra Costa Times from California (in which I’m also quoted).
The New York Times is less negative about the issue than The Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Universities Join Saudis in Partnerships
TAMAR LEWINThree prominent American universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University — are starting five-year partnerships, worth $25 million or more, with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university being built in Saudi Arabia.
Under the agreements, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley, the computer-science department and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas will help pick the faculty and develop the curriculum for the new university, known by the acronym Kaust, which is scheduled to open next year with a $10 billion endowment.
Over the five years, each university will receive a $10 million gift, $10 million for research on their home campus and $5 million for research at Kaust, as well as administrative costs.
“The agreement will allow us to improve our facilities here in California, and fund a stream of graduate students, without taxing our existing infrastructure,†said Albert Pisano, the chairman of Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, which he said had voted 34 to 2 to proceed with the agreement. “We’re going to work on projects that are good for the Middle East and for California, like energy sources beyond petroleum, improved water desalination, and solar energy in the desert.â€
Despite its enormous oil wealth, Saudi Arabia lacks world-class research universities. In the last few years, as the Persian Gulf nations have begun to worry about the eventual need to convert from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, they have started offering lavish inducements to American universities to bring their expertise to the region.
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Christian Science Monitor has a piece that’s the other side of the coin: bringing Arab students (including those from Saudi Arabia) to schools like MIT and Harvard:
A bid to enroll Arabs in U.S. colleges
MIT students help dispel their fears and doubts about applying to American schools, where they remain a relative minority after 9/11
Tom A. PeterCambridge, Mass. – Like any good high school student, Lana Awad dreamed of an Ivy League education. But when the Syrian teen started applying to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Harvard College, her guidance counselor told her to think smaller. After all, no one from her high school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia had ever gone to a college farther away than Lebanon, just across the Arabian Peninsula.
“They wanted me not to be disappointed, not to feel, you know, rejected … advising me not to aim too high,” says Ms. Awad. In the end, she got into Princeton and MIT, where she is now a freshman.
At a time when Arab enrollments in US universities are still recovering from a post-9/11 plunge, it is experiences like Awad’s that an MIT student group is trying to change. The College Admissions Arab Mentorship Program (CAAMP), whose members have just returned from their annual tour of Middle Eastern schools, aims to ensure that myths about American colleges and life in the US don’t deter Arabs from studying here. The group encourages Middle Eastern students to take advantage of US universities so they can become more effective leaders in their homeland, as well as agents of cross-cultural exchange.
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March:06:2008 - 11:32
In short, universities line up to forget any commitment to equal opportunity or women’s rights for a sake of a few bucks.
March:06:2008 - 11:39
That’s the cynical–and mistaken–view on this that the protesters in Berkeley are holding.
Do you think Saudis will become enlightened by being shut off from outside intellectual challenge? It didn’t seem to work for the last 1,000 years of the history of Arabia. As a result, Saudis are largely ignorant of the outside world, except when it barges into the living rooms. They’re frighted by outsiders of any and all stripes, even those they dominate.
March:06:2008 - 12:16
John:
Do you think Saudis will become enlightened by being shut off from outside intellectual challenge?
1. No one shut them off, they shut themselves off.
2. I don’t think “enlightenment” can be obtained by buying a foreign education. Like charity, it begins at home, and in self examination–the one thing that education cannot teach and that KSA leadership has seem to have avoided.
The Saudis have been open to outside intellectual challenge for a long time. All they have done with it internally is subvert it for their own purpose. So, no, I don’t buy this sudden investment in education as a means for progress. I rather see it as a way of establishing their own influence in the academic world so that they can promote their own regressive agenda in that area.
Frankly, if KSAs have managed to resist for long in a regressive zone that is centuries behind the rest of the world, what makes you think that opening a few buildings with books (obeying strict gender segregation laws) is going make a difference in their mind set? I don’t see this as KSA opening up, I see this as their regressive agenda suddenly becoming acceptable in bastions of liberal education.
Sorry, the KSA leadership has proven itself incapable of evolution. It’s not my job to sign away my rights for those who, even in the year 2007, feel it necessary to deny women their basic rights. Just because they can’t learn to walk, I don’t have to learn how to crawl. And there is zero evidence that they will actually incorporate any of the liberal thought processes into their attitudes. If they wanted to do so, they could do so without buying faculty from Ivy leagues.
I guess we see it differently. You see it as a sign that KSA is interested in education. I see it as a sign that KSA is using its money to promote its religious agenda including gender segregation even on liberal American campuses.
March:06:2008 - 14:09
Olivetheoil I am with you on this one in terms of gender segregation is wrong and believe me when I say that because I am someone who lives through it…it more than inconveniences people from both sexes.
As far as your reference to that article well I believe that Muslim women can wear Islamic clothes and work up a sweat in a gym with the presence of men. I don’t see the problem. There are ladies only gyms if she wants to join one, but to discriminate against men is wrong too.
As far as America universities discriminating and not allowing women on or into certain programs on Saudi soil just proves how desperate people are for money. I do not want to hear the line we have to extend a hand and blah blah. They want the money that is in it for them and to hell with principles. If American universities cannot be principled, why should Saudis be held to any higher standard. This is the line I hear all the time…
Bottom line…provide equal opportunities on foreign soil or keep your butt in America!
March:06:2008 - 14:31
“Unlike other Saudi universities, the new school — known as KAUST — will not be subject to gender or religious restrictions, said John Burgess, a former U.S. diplomat who runs the Crossroads Arabia blog. King Abdullah intends to allow KAUST complete freedom so it can become one of the world’s top graduate schools, Burgess said.”
Good news to hear and secondly Saudis need to get over this Israeli ties thing.
Israeli people are smart we got to grant them that much…If we look at their output history as a whole, Muslims cannot deny their great contributions to mankind. Like it or not…
We are all human beings in the end…Saudis need over it already! Might I mention that Jewish people are also very helpful as they have always helped in the New York airport with my luggage and children knowing that I am a Muslim!
March:06:2008 - 14:52
Concerning Israel…well first I am so damn sick of hearing about it. Here is my opinion in a nutshell (God forgive me)
Let the Jews have the flippin piece of land if they want it that badly. Our Kabaa is in Mecca and we face that direction to pray not the one in Jerusalem. Second, all the scripture, Christian, Jewish and Muslim says they (JEWS) are going to have it anyway in the end…so why keep fighting over it. I mean if people believe the scripture…(as per my understanding). Muslims have Islamic countries…Do Jews have any Jewish state?
I could be mistaken but hey that is the way I have seen it for the longest time! I have kept it inside but now the world knows. Not like the world cares what I think lol
March:06:2008 - 16:35
The issue with Israelis is that the KSA and Israel are still, almost 60 years later, still in a formal state of war. They do not recognize each other diplomatically.
It is to Israel’s advantage to welcome Saudis who care to visit. It is certainly not to Saudi advantage to welcome Israelis, if that welcome is going to be used as a club to beat the government with ‘because it’s letting down our Palestinian brothers’.
It’s far easier for the government to simply say no and avoid the countless hassles.
Do you recall what happened when a couple of Israeli journalists were let in a year or so ago? The Israelis trumpeted it in their media; the Saudi government had to go into CYA mode to explain why they ‘let the enemy’ into the country.
So Israeli professors won’t be welcomed at KAUST, at least in the beginning. That’s probably a loss to the Saudis, but one they’ll somehow manage to live with.
March:09:2008 - 08:35
You know what John I did a little research on my family background and found that there is a great chance that my family were Askenazic Jews. My middle name is extremely Jewish too…lol
Wonder if I have a chance of finding work at KAUST?
Because if I don’t find something aka. JOB/ BIG BREAK I am going to join the Illuminati and go to Israel
March:09:2008 - 09:49
There’s not going to be a problem with Jews working at KAUST, both the government and school administration claim. I know many Jews who have worked successfully in the KSA, so I really don’t see it as a problem.
Proselytizing or claiming Israeli citizenship would certainly create issues.
But Muslims (including Saudis) are permitted to marry Jewish women according to Islamic law.
March:09:2008 - 10:06
That is good that Jews can work at KAUST…hmmm this Israel issue is a sticky one! One that must be solved first before other problems/issues can be fixed…
According to Islamic law, YES what you said it true, but not according to Saudi law
I am joking with my husband now telling him that if my ancestors were Jewish that makes me Jewish and that would also make our children Jewish. He thinks I am nuts LOL…I like teasing
I have that chutzpah…
March:10:2008 - 05:25
Just for the record…I want to have it known that I choose service to others not service to myself.
I choose to love people and not manipulate them.
God Bless…All
March:11:2008 - 19:37
my opinion in a nutshell…Let the Jews have the flippin piece of land if they want it that badly. Our Kabaa is in Mecca and we face that direction to pray not the one in Jerusalem.
I could guess that your husband has different ideas. And have you asked yourself what your children will be taught?
March:11:2008 - 22:09
Solomon2 I believe in peace…which means it hurts me to see Palestinians and Israelis killed.
I am just the type of person who tries to divide the pie up evenly. As far as what he thinks well we don’t talk much
If I say my opinion he will say how the Jews have upset God or something like that so they no longer are worthy of the land…something along those lines.