I just finished one of those kinds of conversations that you get into without really intended to have a heady, intellectual discussion about a topic but then about half way through you realize you’ve totally gone down that path and there’s no turning back so you just succumb to the awesomeness and the depth of conversation like it sucks you in and you completely surrender to it and it produces some pretty profound thoughts as a result. They’re my favorite. I had scheduled a phone call with a classmate in a class of mine at TC. She’s actually a professor at another university in the city so she had an interesting and very curious intellectual background/perspective that definitely fueled the conversation. She’s in my “Education and Development in the Middle East” class in which we discussed higher education in the Middle East during our last session. We talked extensively about Education City and other such initiatives in the Gulf and elsewhere and she wanted to follow up and have a more in-depth conversation about it. It resulted in a type of conversation I haven’t had in a while – the kind I used to have over a glass of wine with my father on the back porch of his villa when I still lived in Doha. It was almost like therapy.
Anyway, we talked about many different things including the history of universities, how they ended up there in the first place, what kind of structure and relationship they had in relation to QF, what QF was all about, and all sort of other things. Two particular pieces or inspirations of the conversation stood out to me.
First, is it possible for US higher education to serve a diplomatic role in the Middle East without falling victim to the role of “traditional” colonial education? It’s no great secret that US foreign policy and diplomacy in the Middle East stinks. It’s the main reason why the countries, their rulers, and their people in MENA largely distrust any US involvement in conflicts or economic endeavor in the region. History has shown that we do things for our own gain and benefit in MENA, and so why should they think otherwise whenever we attempt some sort of new involvement (or even change our ways for that matter). Yet, US Higher Education (USHE hereafter) is highly respected across MENA – perhaps the only thing that bares a US brand that is respected or at least seen as having value. USHE is already serving a very important diplomatic role in the region. When students, faculty, and staff come from the US and go to Doha, they learn something about the Gulf. Their perspectives are changed, their mind and hearts are opened, they return to the US, and they share. The same goes with students from Doha. They come to the US and learn that there are real people, INDIVIDUALS, in the US that can and do care about them, they return to Doha, and they share. International conflicts will not be solved by implementing new policies or offering more money to help the victims of problems we’ve caused. Nor am I suggesting that individuals will either. However, Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism can only be combated one individual at a time, and that is exactly what USHE is doing right now. To use USHE strategically in this endeavor is one of the only truly viable solutions I can see for a future of tolerance and cooperation. But in so doing, do we run the risk of treating USHE like the colonial educational systems of the past which were meant to indoctrinate colonized individuals such that they were ours to manipulate and assimilate into our own culture? I think it would be very easy to fall into this pattern. Thus going forward, the challenge for USHE will be to figure out how to continue to serve this diplomatic role which is so crucial for our current time in history without falling into patterns of indoctrination that we have so easily fallen into (often deliberately) in the past. This will require a serious examination of policy and practice that we choose to bring with us when we expand beyond our borders.
Second, do we need a completely new paradigm in which to conceptualize the educational transfer of US universities to Qatar? I say Qatar specifically because I truly believe that what is going on in Qatar with Qatar Foundation is truly unique and unlike any other USHE venture in the region. This is because of the power dynamics that exist and function in the relationship between QF and the International Branch Campuses (IBCs hereafter). This was partly a realization from the conversation we had in class the other day. Everybody thinks that (a) universities in the Gulf right now has asserted themselves and their presence by way of force or at least the process was initiated from the US and (b) that every US university in the Gulf and the broader MENA came there by the same means or process, i.e. they’re all the same. Both assertions are wrong, but particularly the last one. IBCs in Qatar were invited by the Qatar Foundation to be there. In fact, none of the universities in Qatar would be there without having been invited by QF. They might have been in other countries in the Gulf, but they certainly wouldn’t be in Education City. Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned has chosen each and every one of the universities for a specific program that they are well known for which she believes fit the educational and human capital development goals of the country. She invites the school, a contract is drawn, funds are given, plans are made to use those funds, and a university open in Qatar. What people don’t realize is that through this contractual agreement, QF completely controls the budget of those universities and controls to a large extent the decisions that are made and the practices that are implemented by those universities. There is certainly some autonomy, but the balance between control and autonomy is very delicate and anybody working for either QF or one of the IBCs will tell you its a constant source of tension. That alone is evidence of just how much power QF has in this relationship. If one day QF decided they no longer wanted to have Education City, the IBCs would have to pick up and leave. No questions asked. THIS IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER MODEL CURRENTLY EXISTING IN THE GULF AND THAT HAS EXISTED IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL TRANSFER. So why are we using old theories and paradigms to make sense of what’s going on there? How is it that we in academia feel we can judge the success, failures, intentions, or decisions of the IBCs based on theories that apply to a completely different set of contexts? I have a feeling it has something to do with researchers, both new and old, wanting to get their “stuff” published and can only do so by building upon older models of thought. This is neither insightful nor helpful. In fact, it’s poor scholarship. So, who is going to put their academic career at risk to try to understand the situation as it actually is and produce information that can be useful for future endeavors in educational development? Certainly not anybody who has anything to loose.
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