Quite a week it has been. Or maybe it's just today. For whatever reason, my Wednesday always seems to make my head swim with ideas. Today's Education and Development in the Middle East class was a continuation of last week's discussion of the value of branch campuses in the Arabian Gulf. I actually wrote my mid term paper on that topic exactly (looking at it through a much broader lens though) so I was rarin' and ready for today's discussion. We ended up not even getting to the readings for today which I didn't mind so much. Instead, the conversation focused on the purpose and necessity of having Western, particularly US institutions, in Qatar and the rest of the gulf to achieve the goals that are set forth by the government in having them there. One of the biggest issues that came up was the reconciliation of Western and Islamic values. This was most definitely NOT the first time I'd ever talked about it but for whatever reason today made me think about it in a different way. Western versus Islamic is an entirely (stereo)typical dichotomy that inevitably comes up whenever we talk about education in the Middle East. What if, in fact, we've made up this dichotomy? Does it actually exist? Has anybody taken the time to figure out what students actually think about it? We talk about the incompatibility and clash all the time but these discussions are usually just continuations of rhetoric established in the age-old debate as opposed to encouraging new ways of thinking about the issue. Which got me to thinking... wouldn't it be fascinating to actually do a study that looked at students' perceptions of the relationship between the "Western, liberal" values espoused in western higher education and the "traditional, Islamic, and Qatari" values that we believe are at such odds with it? They go to a western university so they must have at some point come to terms with this issue. And I know for a fact that not all of our students are super liberal by the mere fact that many of our students aren't even allowed to stay on campus late at night or on weekends unsupervised because of their conservative parents. So... what do they think about it? Do they see these two sets of values as being at odds? How do they reconcile the difference if they see one? In particular, it would be fascinating to do this study of students before they come to uni, during uni, and once they leave in a longitudinal study to see if their perspectives change. There's obviously a little bit of self-selection bias here but I still think it would be fascinating...
Instead f heading off to my final class of the week, Postcolonial Studies in Education, class was cancelled and we had one of two different lectures that we could attend. I chose the one entitled "People, Power & Pedagogies of Protest" which was a panel-led teach-in on the current issues going on in the Middle East. About 80 or so minutes consisted of the panelists (all professors in my department) talking about various aspects of the issue from historical background and underpinnings to the nature of demographics of the revolutionary groups themselves. My head is still swimming from the multitude of issues brought up but some key questions and observations that came from the talk:
- the revolts underway right now are not a product of facebook, but rather a quarter century of unrest, distrust, and dissatisfaction with current political regimes
- 3 conditions have been particularly enabling in the revolutions: (1) the expansion of mass higher education, (2) growth and prominence of student and trade unions as proxies for civil societies that have been coopted by the state, and (3) the production of news beyond state controlled media (which is connected but not entirely dependent on facebook and twitter)
- Nonviolent strategies of political organization have been key in effectively rendering useless the military and brute force by the state
- What is the role of the ulama (religious intellectual elite) in the transformation of the state and how will they adapt to the new conditions (and how will the transformation force them to adapt)?
- How far South will the revolutionary spirit spread (as in Zimbabwe)? Perhaps it won't as much because of the relative lack of access to higher education...
- What is the role of higher education in all of this? The protesters are generally young, educated, and unemployed. Higher education is viewed to have a significant hand in the liberalizing and democratizing of the youth of the region. What exactly is it about higher education that has created this precondition? What are the elements of educational style that have ripened the students and the issue? This question in particular has some very serious implications.
- Pressure on Obama and the push for American to have a role in all of this has lessened to a significant extent as the wave of revolution has spread throughout the region, indicating a more systemic issue as opposed to a very contextual geo-political crisis that America has its hands in directly (as was the case with Mubarak). At the same time, though, we've had our fair share of muddling with Libya and look what's happened there. Regardless, pressure for Obama to come out and say something or take action has lessened as the issue has grown far beyond the isolated incidence of one or two nation-states, as people are realizing this is a semi-global movement.
- Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT a class struggle. If anything, it's created solidarity between classes are lower, middle, and upper classes have all been a part of the protesters. It's possible that the workers in service industries might have tipped the scale by striking in response Mubarak's refusal to resign, effectively shutting down the country and giving him no choice. But everybody is in this together.
So there you have it. I really wish I would have recorded it...
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