White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

‘American’ Middle East Universities in Danger

September 1, 2016 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

By Linda Gasparello

The attack on the American University of Kabul opens a new chapter on impeding access to liberal education in Afghanistan. It is a chapter that could be opened in as many as 18 American universities across the Middle East and North Africa.

The American University, located on five acres in the Afghan capital, opened in 2006. It is the only private, not-for-profit and co-educational university in the war-devastated country. It offers its 1,700 full- and part-time students a liberal arts and sciences curriculum taught in English. Many receive U.S. government-funded scholarships.

In 2008 then-first lady Laura Bush — who made access to education in Afghanistan one of her causes — helped to secure $42 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development for the American University. The State Department reportedly considers it to be an important symbol of the partnership between the United States and Afghanistan, and it has educated many Afghan government and non-government group officials who are trying to build a modern country.

Other American universities in the Middle East and North Africa – between nine and 18 – that receive U.S. government support also promote critical thinking and a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. The oldest of these, the American University in Beirut, has been doing so since its founding by American missionaries in 1866 as the Syrian Protestant College. Its mission statement says, “The university believes deeply in and encourages freedom of thought and expression and seeks to foster tolerance and respect for diversity and dialogue.”

As Michelle Evans, student life coordinator at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the second-oldest American-brand institution in the Middle East, told U.S. News & World Report, “The mission and values of an American university is to cultivate a well-rounded, independent thinker who is ready for the challenges of the world.”

As a graduate student on a U.S. government-funded scholarship to AUC in the late 1970s, I saw how important it was to have such an institution in a country that was trying to modernize. AUC students were exposed to so many more courses and ideas than students at the national universities, including Cairo University, who took classes only within their discipline. I felt they would be the most ready and able to carry out the “opening up” (or infitah) to the West that President Anwar Sadat was beginning in 1977.

Remarkably, as strongholds of Western education and values, AUC and other universities did not suffer lethal attacks during the civil wars in Lebanon, Arab anger at President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, or the Arab Spring. But there have been attacks on them, and I experienced one at AUC in 1977.

On a January afternoon, I was enjoying coffee with friends in the interior garden of the university when we heard a faculty member shout,“There’s a riot outside. Go home! Go home now!” Rioters pelted the university with stones, breaking windows. The stoning stunned everyone because the university — and America — was held in such high esteem in Egypt. The school’s librarian, a well-born Egyptian matron, said to me, “Who would do such a thing?”

We soon learned just who.

Thousands of poor Egyptians took to the streets in anger over Sadat’s economic liberalization, specifically a government decree lifting price controls on bread and other basic necessities, acceding to an International Monetary Fund request. The countrywide Bread Riots lasted for two days, and rioters destroyed 120 buses and hundreds of buildings in Cairo alone. But the American University was spared.

The Bread Riot protesters threw rocks; today’s Islamists, motivated by ideology, will toss bombs.

The attack on the American University of Kabul was a seminal event. Now the venerated American universities in the Middle East and North Africa will be even more vulnerable than they already are. — For InsideSources


Filed Under: Gasparello's Articles, Random Features Tagged With: Afghanistan, Anwar Sadat, AUAF, AUB, AUC, Beirut, Bread Riots, Cairo, intifah, Islamists, Kabul, Middle East, North Africa

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
The U.S. Commands the Heights of Science — for Now

The U.S. Commands the Heights of Science — for Now

Llewellyn King

Pull up the drawbridge, flood the moat and drop the portcullis. That, it would seem, is the science and research policy of the United States circa 2025. The problem with a siege policy is that eventually the inhabitants in the castle will starve. Current actions across the board suggest that starvation may become the fate […]

This Isn’t the Time To Politicize Electricity Again

This Isn’t the Time To Politicize Electricity Again

Llewellyn King

The future of electricity is being discussed in terms of how we make it: whether it should be generated by nuclear, wind and solar or by coal and natural gas. Nuclear is favored by the utilities and the Trump administration, but it will take decades and untold billions of dollars to build up a sizable […]

The Stateless in America Would Face a Kind of Damnation

The Stateless in America Would Face a Kind of Damnation

Llewellyn King

I have only known one stateless person. You don’t get a medal for it or wear a lapel pin. The stateless are the hapless who live in the shadows, in fear. They don’t know where the next misadventure will come from: It could be deportation, imprisonment or an enslavement of the kind the late Johnny […]

How the Special Relationship Became the Odd Couple

How the Special Relationship Became the Odd Couple

Llewellyn King

Through two world wars, it has been the special relationship: the linkage between the United States and Britain. It is a linkage forged in a common language, a common culture, a common history and a common aspiration to peace and prosperity. The relationship, always strong, was burnished by President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret […]

Copyright © 2025 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in