If you work on a branch campus of a US-based institution of higher education in the Middle East and you DON'T struggle with questions of purpose and place at least every once in a while, then you need a reality check. Don't get me wrong, I believe deeply in the transformative potential of higher education for students at Carnegie Mellon in Qatar. In fact, I think the potential for transformation might be greater here than even in the States. HOWEVER, there are a lot of issues that often go unnoticed and unaddressed that have a profound impact on the way we do work here in the Gulf. "Why are we here," "What are we trying to do," and "how do we fit in the broader societal scheme of things" are 3 very important questions.
When I was reading TC Today, I came across this quote which struck me dead in my path:
"Ultimately, Bond's acknowledgment of his debt to the Rosenwald Fund and a number of other institutions goes to the heart of a paradox that he, unlike many younger African scholars, tackles head on: that for a colonized people to tell its story, and ultimately to "de-colonize," it must first become educated - a process that cannot occur without the assistance of the colonizers themselves." from "Bond. George Bond." by Joe Levine in TC Today Spring 2009, p. 15.
George Bond is a faculty member at Teachers College and the entire article was about him and his life's educational path. It tells the story of his African roots and the kinds of issues (like those mentioned above) that he faced and has continued to face in his life as an academician. The quote above was taken directly from the story and it stuck me because of how painfully relevant it is to the situation we are in here in Qatar. It spoke to the very issues we encounter here in Qatar.
We function in a country that has been recovering from post-colonialism for decades (but ironically a much shorter period of time than many other post-colonized countries in the world). The ruler and its people are trying to build for themselves a future which is viable, sustainable, and prosperous. And yet, little over 200,000 of the nearly 2 million people living and working in the country are actually Qatari. In many ways, this country would not be what it is now without the contributions of the enormous expat population. It would be hard to argue against that. But the Qatari monarch, the government, and its citizens struggle to maintain control of what's happening in the country. Many are supportive of what we're doing at Education City. Many are not for reasons of cultural degradation and liberalization... among others I'm sure. Some are becoming alarmed at the rapid rate of growth and fear losing control of the future in the face of increasing non-Qatari populations. With that comes the struggle for ownership - the desire to be at the helm of development is faced with the overwhelming realization that it cannot be done by Qatari hands alone for the mere fact that there are too few of them. This only scratches at the surface of paradoxes similar to that spoken of in the quote that riddle the country's developmental trajectory.
There are a host of other compounding sociological and anthropological factors in this incredible paradox. Take for example the idea of good and bad expatriates. Good expatriates in Qatar are usually those of the Asia-subcontinent decent. "Good" minorities (regardless of ethnicity, it just happens to be divided that way in this country) generally speaking "know their role" in Qatar society. They do what they're told to do or what they were brought here to do, don't try to be treated equally to Qataris because they're thankful for the opportunity to be here in the first place and that generally keeps the balance. "Bad" minorities, i.e. most Westerners in Qatar, generally speaking come from much more privileged backgrounds both in their own country as well as culturally/economically/politically in a global context and that causes significant tension because they demand to be treated equally to Qataris. That, in turn, has an interesting effect on the educational institutions in which we work and on the societal structure into which our graduates will go after graduating
The core issue here is in the desire to be treated equally (for the expats) and wanting to have ownership (for Qataris). In Qatar, western institutions see themselves as the transforming agents not just in students lives but for Qatar itself whereas arabs, particularly Qataris, resent that mindset. Many don't even want such a transformation, and even more are still trying to figure out how they feel about it. Westerners sometimes claim that we're doing the real work, the most significant work or contributions, and say that Qataris don't care (which isn't at all the case). All of this tension gets in the way of sharing pride and ownership of progress JOINTLY. We as westerners, often short-term workers in a country with a bright future, need to understand that these educational institutions WILL NOT be sustainable if a resistance to shared ownership continues to persist. They'll end up like all the political systems the US has ever tried to setup throughout the developing world - we put things in place and then when we leave they fail because there was no ownership on the part of the indigenous population. The Higher Ed system in the US as we know it today is very much a product and function of the development of our nation. It is possibly THE quintessential indigenous educational system. And it works there (although that's been an increasingly popular topic of debate as of late). We need to start thinking about what American Higher Education would look like as an indigenous system in other countries so that we can ensure that it will work for their future as well.
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