Houses of Wisdom Matter: The Responsibility to Protect and Rebuild Higher Education in the Arab World Sultan Barakat and Sansom Milton The Brookings Institution is a private non-profit organization. Its mission is to conduct high- quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides to any supporter is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are not determined by any donation. Copyright © 2015 Brookings Institution BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 U.S.A. www.brookings.edu BROOKINGS DOHA CENTER Saha 43, Building 63, West Bay, Doha, Qatar www.brookings.edu/doha Houses of Wisdom Matter: The Responsibility to Protect and Rebuild Higher Education in the Arab World Sultan Barakat and Sansom Milton1 Introduction as great centers of learning, played a leading role in the advancement of many fields of Higher education is often an unrecognized knowledge, chiefly mathematics, science, and casualty of war. Over the past few years, it literature.2 Universities such as al-Zitounah in has increasingly found itself caught in the Tunis (est. 734) and al-Qarawiyyin in Fes (est. crossfire of spreading regional conflicts in 859) were established long before Bologna, the Arab world with deadly clampdowns on the first European university (est. 1088). They student protestors in Egypt, the bombing of become known for their progressive attitude campuses in Syria and Gaza, and the closure and tolerance, serving as a meeting place for of universities in Libya and Yemen. The severe different schools of thought that contributed toll that regional conflicts have taken on higher to the understanding of “the other” and as such education is further compounded by a failure played an important role in the dissemination to appreciate the strategic role of the sector in of ideas across the Mediterranean and beyond. stabilizing and promoting the recovery of war- torn communities and states. Unfortunately, since this “Golden Age” of advanced learning and scholarship the record of This paper argues that higher education, higher education in the region has been mixed properly supported, is able to act as a catalyst in terms of its contribution to the advancement for the recovery of war-torn countries in the of knowledge and societies. On the one hand, Arab world, not only by supplying the skills universities of then-newly independent Arab and knowledge needed to reconstruct shattered nations of the 1950s played an important role economic and physical infrastructure, but also in producing elite graduates with the advanced by supporting the restoration of collapsed skills necessary for implementing ambitious governance systems and fostering social modernization and industrialization strategies. cohesion. As home to the strategically vital 18- Through the 1980s, higher education, although 25 age group, higher education can help shelter limited in scope, was seen as a critical part of the and protect an important subset of young men nation-building toolkit available to the post- and women during crisis situations, maintaining colonial state. University education became a their hopes in the future and preventing them primary means of opening up opportunities from being driven into the hands of violent for the broader population, integrating rural groups. For these reasons, it is high time that and working classes into national projects, and Arab states and the international community strengthening the polity of the state. In cases accept their collective responsibility to protect ranging across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, higher education during conflict and rebuild universities (both students and staff) made shattered institutions in its aftermath. important contributions to advancing powerful Arab Higher Education in Peace and War ideologies and political movements across the Arab World, such as pan-Arabism, socialism, The Arab world was responsible for some of the and Islamism, by offering the political space earliest institutions of higher education, which, for debating new ideas and providing the 1 Sultan Barakat is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center. He is also the Founding Chairman of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit at the University of York in the United Kingdom. Sansom Milton is a Research Fellow at the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit. The authors would like to thank Andrew Leber, and Irene Costantini for constructive and insightful comments on draft versions of the paper. The paper also benefited from the reviews of two anonymous reviewers, to whom the authors are grateful. 2 Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present (London: Macmillan, 1968), 410; George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007). 1 intellectual leadership behind the development capable of managing post-oil transitions.7 For of civil society.3 instance, a reform and investment program launched by Saudi Arabia in 2007 aimed at On the other hand, since the 1990s higher building world-class universities.8 education has in some ways regressed across the region, both in terms of its overall contribution Meanwhile, in Syria, major economic and to knowledge creation as well as to nation- educational changes beginning in 2000 aimed building. At the same time, the region witnessed to increase tertiary enrollment and set in a rapid expansion in the number of universities motion ambitious higher education reforms.9 and enrollment levels, propelled by market Similarly, Libya launched a $6 billion scheme liberalization strategies (inviting private, for- in 2006 then described as the “world’s largest profit capital into the sector). Ultimately, university building program” with the goal of higher education systems have become focused building a high-tech knowledge economy.10 on and driven by quantity rather than quality As Iraq emerged from the U.S. occupation and teaching rather than research. The failure and years of sanctions, it announced the of quantitative expansion to fuel improvements Iraq Education Initiative in 2009, pledging in quality prompted the claim that “no region $1 billion toward investment in overseas in the world has invested more in education scholarships and university reforms. with less to show for it.”4 As an indicator of this, only one Arab university was ranked in With the advent of the Arab Spring in 2010 the top 400 of the 2014-2015 Times Higher and the important role students and university Education World University Rankings.5 This in campuses played in mobilizing public opinion, a region that is home to 370 million people there was hope that a new space for increased distributed across 22 states with one-third of academic freedom in the region could accelerate global oil reserves and almost 400 universities. these openings to ensure that higher education could contribute not just economic growth, Of course, this decline has not gone unnoticed but also to social and political change.11 This by policy makers, and since the early 2000s some phase of optimism has now largely dissipated Arab states have launched ambitious strategies as Syria’s brutal civil war, the descent of post- to reform higher education and reposition it at Qaddafi Libya into violence and division, the the heart of sustainable development strategies, takeover of Sanaa by Houthi rebels, the 2014 driven by the desire to diversify their economies Israeli war on Gaza, and the spread of the and boost knowledge production.6 In the Gulf Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq and Syria have states, massive public funds were invested in shifted global attention to the containment of higher education to produce domestic skill sets the fallout from regional conflict. 3 Donald Reid, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012); Nancy Jabbra and Joseph Jab- bra, “Education and Political Development in the Middle East,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 19, no. 3-4 (1984), 202-218. 4 Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Navtej Dhillon, “Stalled Youth Transitions in the Middle East: A Framework for Policy Reform,” Middle East Youth Initiative Working Paper no. 8, Wolfensohn Center for Development: Dubai School of Government, October 2008. 5 This is the University of Marrakech Cadi Ayyad. “World University Rankings 2014-2015,” Times Higher Education, <https://www.timeshigh- ereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/world-ranking> (7 June 2015). 6 Ahmad Galal and Taher Kanaan, eds., Financing Higher Education in Arab Countries (Cairo: The Economic Research Forum, 2010). 7 Christopher Davidson and Peter Mackenzie Smith, eds., Higher Education in the Gulf States: Shaping Economies, Politics and Culture (London: SAQI Books/London Middle East Institute, 2008). 8 Abdulhalem Mazi and Philip Altbach, “Dreams and Realities: The World-Class Idea and Saudi Arabian Higher