Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in the Desert

[Caano Geel]

So what is the kings message here, wrt, liberal secular colleges, education and development if he's banning the thought police form his new super campus and men and women may interact freely.

 

Is he saying that Islam is not compatible with education and development or that saudi-islam is not compatible with the above - hence the requirement for some tweaking. Its interesting since which ever way his argument goes, he's undermining the justification of his rule and a large part of his countries social fibre.

 

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Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in the Desert, By THANASSIS CAMBANIS, for the NY Times, October 26, 2007

 

The construction site for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia’s effort to build its own M.I.T.

 

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 25 — On a marshy peninsula 50 miles from this Red Sea port, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is staking $12.5 billion on a gargantuan bid to catch up with the West in science and technology.

 

Between an oil refinery and the sea, the monarch is building from scratch a graduate research institution that will have one of the 10 largest endowments in the world, worth more than $10 billion.

 

Its planners say men and women will study side by side in an enclave walled off from the rest of Saudi society, the country’s notorious religious police will be barred and all religious and ethnic groups will be welcome in a push for academic freedom and international collaboration sure to test the kingdom’s cultural and religious limits.

 

This undertaking is directly at odds with the kingdom’s religious establishment, which severely limits women’s rights and rejects coeducation and robust liberal inquiry as unthinkable.

 

For the new institution, the king has cut his own education ministry out the loop, hiring the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco to build the campus, create its curriculum and attract foreigners.

 

Supporters of what is to be called the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust, wonder whether the king is simply building another gated island to be dominated by foreigners, like the compounds for oil industry workers that have existed here for decades, or creating an institution that will have a real impact on Saudi society and the rest of the Arab world.

 

“There are two Saudi Arabias,” said Jamal Khashoggi, the editor of Al Watan, a newspaper. “The question is which Saudi Arabia will take over.”

 

The king has broken taboos, declaring that the Arabs have fallen critically behind much of the modern world in intellectual achievement and that his country depends too much on oil and not enough on creating wealth through innovation.

 

“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. “We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”

 

Traditional Saudi practice is on display at the biggest public universities, where the Islamic authorities vet the curriculum, medical researchers tread carefully around controversial subjects like evolution, and female and male students enter classrooms through separate doors and follow lectures while separated by partitions.

 

Old-fashioned values even seeped into the carefully staged groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday for King Abdullah’s new university, at which organizers distributed an issue of the magazine The Economist with a special advertisement for the university wrapped around the cover. State censors had physically torn from each copy an article about Saudi legal reform titled “Law of God Versus Law of Man,” leaving a jagged edge.

 

Despite the obstacles, the king intends to make the university a showcase for modernization. The festive groundbreaking and accompanying symposium about the future of the modern university were devised partly as a recruiting tool for international academics.

 

“Getting the faculty will be the biggest challenge,” said Ahmed F. Ghoniem, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulting for the new university. “That will make it or break it.” Professor Ghoniem has advised the new university to lure international academics with laboratory facilities and grants they cannot find at home, but he also believes that established professors will be reluctant to leave their universities for a small enclave in the desert.

 

“You have to create an environment where you can connect to the outside world,” said Professor Ghoniem, who is from Egypt. “You cannot work in isolation.”

 

He admitted that even though he admired the idea of the new university, he would be unlikely to abandon his post at M.I.T. to move to Saudi Arabia.

 

Festivities at the construction site on Sunday for 1,500 dignitaries included a laser light show and a mockup of the planned campus that filled an entire room. The king laid a crystal cornerstone into a stainless steel shaft on wheels.

 

Cranes tore out mangroves and pounded the swampland with 20-ton blocks into a surface firm enough to build the campus on. Inside a tent, the king, his honor guard wearing flowing robes and curved daggers, and an array of Aramco officials in suits took to a shiny stage lighted with green and blue neon tubing, like an MTV awards show. Mist from dry ice shrouded the stage, music blared in surround sound, and holographic projections served as a backdrop to some of the speeches.

 

From a laconic monarch known for his austerity, the pomp, along with a rare speech by the king himself, was intended to send a strong signal, according to the team charged with building and staffing the new campus within two years.

 

The king is lavishing the institution not only with money, but also with his full political endorsement, intended to stave off internal challenges from conservatives and to win over foreign scholars who doubt that academic freedom can thrive here.

 

The new project is giving hope to Saudi scholars who until the king’s push to reform education in the last few years have endured stagnant research budgets and continue to face extensive government red tape.

 

“Because Aramco is founding the university, I believe it will have freedom,” said Abdulmalik A. Aljinaidi, dean of the research and consultation institute at King Abdulaziz University, Jidda’s biggest, with more than 40,000 students. “For Kaust to succeed, it will have to be free of all the restrictions and bureaucracy we face as a public university.”

 

Even in the most advanced genetics labs at King Abdulaziz, the women wear full face coverings, and female students can meet with male advisers only in carefully controlled public “free zones” like the library. Scientists there tread carefully when they do research in genetics, stem cells or evolution, for fear of offending Islamic social mores.

 

Even in Jidda, the kingdom’s most liberal city, a status rooted in its history as a trading outpost, change comes slowly. This month the governor allowed families to celebrate the post-Ramadan Id al-Fitr holiday in public, effectively allowing men and women to socialize publicly on the same streets for the first time.

 

The religious police were accused of beating a man to death because he was suspected of selling alcohol. Conservatives have fended off efforts by women to secure the right to drive or to run for office, although women have made considerable gains in access to segregated education and workplaces.

 

Against this backdrop, said Mr. Khashoggi, the newspaper editor, the king has conceived of the new university as a liberalizing counterweight, whose success depends on how much it engages the rest of Saudi society. “Nobody wants to live in a ghetto, even a nice one,” Mr. Khashoggi said. “As a Saudi, I say, let’s open up.”

 

Upon completion, the energy-efficient campus will house 20,000 faculty and staff members, students and their families. Social rules will be more relaxed, as they are in the compounds where foreign oil workers live; women will be allowed to drive, for example. But the kingdom’s laws will still apply: Israelis, barred by law from visiting Saudi Arabia, will not be able to collaborate with the university. And one staple of campus life worldwide will be missing: alcohol.

 

The university president will be a foreigner, and the faculty members and graduate students at first will be overwhelmingly foreign as well. Generous scholarships will finance the 2,000 graduate students; planners expect the Saudi share of the student body to increase over the years as scholarships aimed at promising current undergraduates help groom them for graduate studies at the new university.

 

The university’s entire model is built around partnerships with other international universities, and faculty members are expected to have permanent bases at other research institutions abroad.

 

The university will also rely on a new free-market model. The faculty members will not have tenure, and almost all of them will have joint appointments. While the university will initially be awash in money, its faculty and graduate students will still have to compete with top international institutions for the limited pool of private money that underwrites most graduate research.

 

Suhair el-Qurashi, dean of the private all-female Dar Al Hekma College, often attacked as “bad” and “liberal,” said a vigorous example of free-thinking at the university would embolden the many Saudis who back the king’s quest to reform long-stagnant higher education.

 

“The king knows he will face some backlash and bad publicity,” Ms. Qurashi said. “I think the system is moving in the right direction.”

[Johnny B]

^This king ( for a weird reason i like him in comparasion to his predecessors ) maybe the savior of that Monarchy and the father of the Islamic cultural renaissance.

[Ibtisam]

IT is a bit late, but better late than never. I like this old king as JB above said.

 

CG: Not Islam, but their rigid culture that has paralysed them for centuries.

[Thierry.]

This is an excellent move by the Saudi regime, it is about time they get back on the track King Faisal started in the 70s.

As long as they within the boundaries of Islam I don’t see a problem or a hidden agenda. The thought police I assume is a way to keep his subjects in check as his the Kingdom is unpopular.

 

Caano Geel besides you should be happy this institution might the one that you can teach in the near future.

[N.O.R.F]

A new Medical Research Institute has been given the go ahead in the KSA and we have talk of religious police, men and women restrictions, women's rights and Saudi society in general! What ever happened to critical reading (especially a NYT article).

 

A new building is going up somewhere near you in London. There are homeless people sleeping on site at night, violence rains supreme on a weekend night in the same area and prostitution is rife. I wonder if CG and Johnny would blink at such an analysis.

 

At least this new development is in Jeddah ey? :cool:

[NGONGE]

^^ The NYT has to explain things in such a way seeing the kind of reputation Saudi Arabia has in the West.

 

As for the king, he's been attempting to perform a very difficult juggling act for the past few years. Many thinkers and academics (some even religious) have been calling for more openness, freedom and fairness in the kingdom and their cries are getting louder and louder as the days go by. On the other hand, the conservatives insist on preserving the current system and way of life. It looks like the king is veering towards the first group rather than the latter. He's probably surrounding himself with all those American educated nephews, brothers and cousins of his.

 

Ps

Who's the big boss of Aramco (I don't mean Chief Executive)? Has to be one of the big whales of the kingdom. Blame him (or praise him)..

[N.O.R.F]

I wonder who the contractor is?

 

I'm aware the King has been leaning left lately (if there is such a term in the KSA) but the article, instead of emphasising the benefits of such a facility, goes into the usual diatribe known as anti-Saudism.

 

Khalaf will strole in anytime now

[Sharmarkee]

Good move as Saudi's education was all rote and repetitive Memorization,to a research oriented instituations, Prolly they also head-hunted many brilliant minds from the west, specially professors of emerituses such Cornell university, and many others like MIT, where there is a money there is a way.

 

I was watching the whole episode in their tv, and the whole goverment was there supporting the scheme - King Abdullah Research and Technology university on the redsea.

[Caano Geel]

Ghanima

yes, your right about the stagnant culture - but that religious interpretation is used as a justification is the real sadness here.

 

Thierry

walaal, what would or wouldn't be within the boundaries of islam in the setting of academic research. actually that is a trick question, but fundamental to any academic activity is academic honesty, which usually means the space to able to challenge the orthadox, not chartng paths around the ridges of well defined acceptability.

 

Northerner

saaxiib, i think you have the wrong end of the stick there, sadly there are homeless and prostitutes also in SA. further, the rights of men, women and children are central to any human enterprise - really what is the latest and most advanced in anything without the people it is meant to serve or are meant to create it.

So before a society can talk about anything, it must address the condition of its populace. This (along with amaco) is why i sense cynicism in the act.

 

wrt the benefits, yes a campus will be built, and likely that researchers will be bought in, but what will be the reason that keeps them and their knowledge in the country in the long term.

 

ngonge

I agree the king is walking a very tight rope, but he also realises that there are limits - since educating his kingdom will surely create the populace that questions their position, entitlements and privileges. So any self interested party will surely be trying find the formula for 'some, but not enough' - hence the hot air.

 

$10 billion is a lot of money, but in the hands of foreign researchers in walled off institutions and labs it is a colossal waste. Places like MIT work not because they are overrun with cash, but because they provide mechanism which integrate both people and their developments into their local environment, create the markets and have a direct impact. Technology and pharmaceutical industries are such example -

 

Sharmarkee

yes any input to education is a good thing, but surely the money and resources would be better spent by distributing it between the existing institutions a developing a better schools and universities with educate and grow nurture talent that will be better places to address local requirements - that's how everyone has done it. because if there institutions are up to standards, they will naturally create and attract the talent

[who-me]

First of all let me say that it is a wonderful step provided it serves the purpose it is built for. Secondly I keep my fingers crossed because in history kingdoms are not known for their continuous enthusiasm of long projects because as soon as that king steps down his predecessor might have change of heart and thus the project dies slowly. He is lucky if he leaves behind a son who fulfills his dreams and if not, well the work proceeds to the grave sooner than the coffin. Also i do agree with some of the nomads who have said it is not good idea pouring all your coins in one place but rather distributing them in different areas is better. Lastly if you do not have good high school system where are the student who are going to enroll in this university will come from? and i suppose they are not thinking the sky will rain em.

[NASSIR]

Originally posted by Caano Geel:

Even in the most advanced genetics labs at King Abdulaziz, the women wear full face coverings, and female students can meet with male advisers only in carefully controlled public “free zones” like the library. Scientists there tread carefully when they do research in genetics, stem cells or evolution, for fear of offending Islamic social mores.

 

[/QB]

While the aiming of the king for an initiative like this in his country is commendable, the unfolding of this intimation seems to be blemished with a social tendency towards a progress as if it is a western achievement. NYtimes is not known for its impartiality of different values. It flagrantly paints a glitch in Islamic values as though our values are an obstacle to the natural progress of a society.

 

Can anyone whisper closely into their ears that Islam does not and did not project strict regulations into the research and development of scientific enquiries and our values are mainly like that of the cultural values of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Judaism.

[Fabregas]

If the oil runs out the Kings and princes will have some problems. It could threaten the actual existence of the monarchy which is actually prohibited in Islam. It could also raise external threats which could challenge the custodians(false)of the holy mosques and global Wahabi project. Hence why this new King is mingling with some Muslims who less Saudi affliated Islam. Secondly by investing in science etc, it will hopefully create more educated ppl middle class....thus stemming the flow of young unemployed into the hands of anti monarchy Bin laden typ groups. In any case the Saudi thing will have to run it's course one day or another...........

[Caano Geel]

caamir, from what i've seen the NY times represents the closest thing to liberal/inclusive thought in popular US media,

 

also the article or commentary isn't about islam, but the SA regime - its questions their application - a mechanism which by an large as fatah-al-somali said, is setup to maintain a families power and status.

[Haaraahur.]

caamir, from what i've seen the NY times represents the closest thing to liberal/inclusive thought in popular US media

Marmarka qaarkood waxooda been hawaas ka daran.

 

MAD MULLAH'S MEN CANNIBALS.; One Captive and Several Women Eaten by Camp Followers.

[NASSIR]

Caano Geel You are right but all news media, whether TV or print, local, national or international, have one thing they all share, the existent of values. Just to show how important values are to the news, one might say that the news is worthless without values. In recent and past years, applied researchers have become increasingly interested in these values. One writer in particular who conducted a research on values is Herbert J. Ganns in his article “Values in the News.” Ganns studied the (American) news extensively and contrasted a list of eight values he found including individualism, social order, moderatism, altruistic democracy, ethnocentrism, responsible capitalism, national leadership, small-town pastoralism. Although most of these values can be found in the news today, some of them are difficult to locate and others only exists in a limited number of news media., so I was highlighting the cross cultural values the news, particularly the Nytimes convey to its wider readership. They are at most biased against Islamic values.

 

I didn't mean to divert the chief content of the article but this is an implicit message I personally thought was useful to highlight.