The university is one of the development initiatives of the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, who are scattered across 25 countries, mainly in western and central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2000 he established the University of Central Asia, with campuses in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The university specialises in development in mountain regions, but with a degree programme "rooted in the liberal arts and sciences".

A recent conference in London convened by the Aga Khan University included sessions on university governance and reforms in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco and one on Iran, chaired by the former Iranian minister of culture, Seyyed Ataollah Mohajerani. There were sessions on women in higher education, as well as on teaching and research and international partnerships. One paper from Prof. Elizabeth Hermann of the Rhode Island School of Design in the US discussed the new Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh. If a single-sex institution is needed in that context to boost female enrollment in higher education (only 24 percent in Bangladesh) how does it fulfil its mission to have women assuming leadership roles in society?

Other papers ranged from discussion of civic engagement among young people in Turkey to whether the United Arab Emirates should continue to rely on British and American models for its burgeoning higher education system; from the teaching of English in Afghanistan as a means to stimulate development, to the more nitty-gritty academic issues of quality assurance in Arab countries.

Filali-Ansary stresses Muslim civilizations rather than Islam as a religion. "We want to look at Muslims in their diversity, different languages and cultures and historical processes. It’s an alternative to some existing programmes in the Muslim world which look at norms, but not at facts."

Germany

Row over genocide reference

Hundreds of history books have been recalled from German schools after the state of Brandeburg agreed to remove a reference to the "Armenian genocide" of 1915 following pressure from Turkey, which refuses to acknowledge that it took place. A reference to the genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were deported and murdered by the government of the Young Turks in 1915-1916, was included in history books of the east German state in 2002.

Brandenburg was the first state to refer to this lesser-known genocide. Turkey, which until human rights reforms two years ago, threatened to imprison anyone who said the genocide took place, has fought to have the passage removed. The cause of the dispute is the following sentence: "Disengagement from war; extermination and genocide (for example the genocide against the Armenian population of Asia Minor)".

Thomas Hainz, regional education ministry spokesman admits the ministry has removed the line from textbooks because of "international diplomatic resentment". But he insists it is "an independent decision". He says reducing discussions of genocide to just one sentence involving just one case "does not do the topic justice". The education ministry is now working on a new chapter that covers genocide in a more "comprehensive context".

Necmettin Altuntas, the Turkish embassy spokesman in Berlin, denies any pressure had been put on the education ministry. "We wanted the reference to be taken out of the school books because it was stated as fact. Turkey does not deny that something happened but we have not been able to come to the conclusion that it was a massacre."

The move has angered historians. Micha Brumlik, director of the Frankfurt Fritz Bauer Institute that deals with Holocaust history, has condemned the decision, saying there are "two political scandals" involved. One concerns Turkey which for years refused to accept general human rights standards and continues to deny responsibility for the genocide of 1915. But the second concerned Germany and is far more serious. "The authorities in Brandenburg have bowed to pressure from diplomats. I find that shocking for our country," says Brumlik.

Iraq

Universities struggle to get going

As democracy flickers into life in Iraq, international aid for the country’s stricken university system is finally beginning to flow. But security issues that have been the principal barrier to direct intervention remain, leaving the field to agencies and institutions that are prepared to risk the dangers or those able to function at arm’s length.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime almost two years ago, USAid put together a $20 million (Rs.90 crore) strategy based on consortia of US universities and partner universities in Iraq. A few weeks later, Qatar launched a $15 million project as part of a $ 100 million (Rs.450 crore) reconstruction plan. But progress has been limited because of security issues and the wholesale destruction of the higher education infrastructure in the months of chaos as the US-led coalition struggled to gain control.

Baghdad University: security disincentive

Several thousand Iraqi academics fled the country under Saddam’s regime. Several hundred more have left since the end of fighting in search of safe havens from assassinations and kidnappings. Salaries are being increased from $150-400 per month to $1,000-1,500 in a bid to lure them back. But the most severe disincentive is the security situation.

Baghdad University president Mosa Al-Mosawe says that since the fall of the old regime, 47 academics had been assassinated — 17 of them from his own university. Kidnapping for ransom is rife — "the threats come from lazy students to get some finance, especially near the time of final assessments". According to Salih more than 2,000 academics left Iraq under the old regime. Since its fall, a further 260 have left for neighbouring states, the US or Western Europe. "The 19,000 (who remain) are heroes working under difficult conditions," he says.

With the Shias emerging as the dominant party in the new Iraq government, there are also questions about the longer-term commitment to secular and co-educational universities in Iraq. Meanwhile, some experts question whether it is sensible to rebuild the system along the lines used by the previous regime, which in its dying days created scarcely viable universities for purely political reasons.

Fierce literary row jolts academia

A furious row has erupted between the ‘Godzilla’ and ‘King Kong’ of Renaissance literature. Stephen Greenblatt, professor of humanities at Harvard University, has hit out at a devastating review of his latest bestselling book by Alastair Fowler, regius professor of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh University.

In a jaw-dropping review for The Times Literary Supplement, Prof. Fowler accused Greenblatt of creating a "world of stereotypes and flabby shibboleths… like history on amphetamines" in his celebrated life of Shakesphere, Will in the World.

Prof. Greenblatt hit back, pointing out that Fowler also tried to "eviscerate" him 25 years ago over an earlier work, and accusing him of treating readers to "a barrage of irrelevancies, distortions and harrumphing refutations of what I never claimed". Fowler counter-claimed: "I’m sorry to have given Stephen Greenblatt another bad notice. But he could have avoided that by learning, in the course of 30 years, at least a little British history."

The exchange, in the Times Literary Supplement’s letters’ columns, has set the literary world alight. John Sutherland, professor of literature at University College, London, commented in a recent newspaper column that Fowler went at the biography "like a wrecking ball". "It’s Godzilla versus King Kong: two very big beasts of the academic jungle," he remarked.

Greenblatt is best known as the founding father of the ‘new historicism’ — a phrase he coined in 1982 — school of literary criticism, which in essence puts literature firmly in its historical context. His latest book, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, is rumoured to be the highest-paid work of scholarship of all time, attracting a $1 million (Rs.4.5 crore) payout. It was shortlisted for the National Book Award and made The New York Times bestseller list. Alastair Fowler, now retired, devised ‘numerology’ in the 1970s, a revolutionary way of making sense of Renaissance poetry by examining intricate numerological patterns.

As one internet commentator noted: "For a Renaissance scholar, getting your butt kicked by Alastair Fowler is kinda like being an electrician and being told by Thomas Edison that you have your wires crossed."

South Africa

African universities renaissance call

South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, has called on African universities to raise their voices on the continental stage to assist development and respond to unprecedented support from developed countries, especially the G8 which meets in Scotland in June. Mbeki also urged universities to monitor their progress in achieving the goals of good governance, peace, stability and economic growth set by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and the European Union-style African Union (AU) to help drive Africa’s renaissance.

Mbeki: clarion call

Mbeki says African universities face three major challenges. The first is to analyse problems and offer practical solutions. The second is to set up centres to measure progress in key areas such as democracy, peace, stability, human rights and development. And the third is to support socio-economic development on a continent that "now speaks with one voice" about Africa’s pressing needs.

For the first time, the developed world has committed itself to an African support programme designed to achieve an African vision, says Mbeki. He urged universities to collaborate with each other and with governments and societies on programmes that "define the 21st century in our interest", consolidate positive changes in Africa and revive universities. The event also saw the launch as a chapter of the AAU, of the Southern African Regional Universities Association (Sarua), the first higher-education association in Africa to tackle both the needs of universities and development priorities in the region.

United States

Summers squirms in Harvard’s hot seat

Looks like hubris is catching up with Harvard University’s embattled president Lawrence Summers who has acquired an unenviable reputation for arrogance and bad manners (several letters of EducationWorld to him remain unanswered). The uproar following Summers’ comment at an academic conference that "issues of intrinsic aptitude" may account for the fact that fewer women than men succeed in maths and science, shows no signs of dying down.

Summers: faculty pressure

Faculty pressure has mounted, and while calls for Summers’ resignation were initially considered overly dramatic, they have become more serious. A faculty vote of no confidence has been threatened, although some 70 professors have signed a petition in his support and university trustees have announced that the president has their confidence. For 90 minutes in mid February Summers faced 250 mostly critical faculty members and apologised for the comments for at least the second time. "I may be all wrong (but) I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields," he said.

Faculty unhappiness forced Summers already under criticism for his record of promoting women very slowly, to release the transcript of remarks he made on January 14 at a conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He had initially refused to provide the transcript. "It does appear that for many, many different human attributes — height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability — there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means which can be debated, there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population," he told the conference, according to the document. But Summers "ignores the impediments to women’s progress posed by long-standing patterns of prejudice, unwelcoming environments and unequal resources," says Harvard psychology professor Elizabeth Spelke.

The two critical books by alumni are the next hurdle for Summers, an economist by training and a former US secretary of the treasury. Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class by recent graduate Ross Gregory Douthat, says intellectual rigour is eclipsed in the university by personal ambition and political correctness.

In Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World’s Most Powerful University, Richard Bradley, former executive editor of George magazine argues that under the former treasury secretary, the university’s undergraduate curriculum has weakened, the faculty have concentrated on their own careers rather than mentoring students, and the university has surrendered to external political and economic forces. Bradley’s book was written despite official opposition from the university and it blames Summers for at least ignoring, and at worst creating the problems that the institution faces.

France

Mass pupil-teacher protest against bac reform

Education minister Francois Fillon has backed down from plans to change the baccalaureate school-leaving exam, after an estimated 100,000 upper secondary pupils took to the streets in mid February. After the mass protest in towns throughout France, Fillion announced he would not reform the bac until he had allayed pupils and teachers’ fears.

The lycee (school) protests had been growing in recent weeks with pupils turning out in force in January to join with teachers, who mounted their biggest strike for nearly two years to protest the controversial changes. Along with teachers’ unions, lycee pupil representatives walked out of a working group set up by the minister to look at bac reform. They were especially angry about proposals to cut the number of subjects in which students have to take a written exam from 12 to six. The remaining subjects would be examined by continuous assessment.

The bac is a national exam that is externally marked. There are fears that replacing parts of it with in-school continuous assessment will favour pupils from elite lycees. Protestors say that a pass from such top schools would be seen as more valuable than one from a school in a deprived area. Another major bone of contention is the proposed abolition of travaux personnels encadres, a multi-disciplinary bac option of supervised independent study that can boost results.

The protestors fear some options, notably in social sciences and economics, would be axed. Fillion says they are mistaken but the fear remains that the loss of thousands of teaching posts and cuts in resources will mean some subjects being axed from the curriculum.

The lycee students also oppose the proposed "common base of skills" for pupils which is at the centre of the Fillion attempts to improve the 3Rs at all educational levels. They claim making room for this, would mean the end or marginalisation of some subjects such as sports, arts and technology.

Demonstrators in Paris numbered between 15,000 and 80,000 according to estimates of the police. Following the massive protest Fillon says he will not reform the bac "so long as we have not lifted the fears which have been expressed".

China

Economic boom generates reverse flow

China’s continuing economic development is bringing its overseas students back home in greater numbers. In a recent survey, the majority of Chinese studying abroad expressed a willingness to return to work in their home country.

Chinese students abroad: reverse flow beginnings

Historically a large proportion of foreign students have not returned to China. The number returning is rising, yet remains low overall. Between 1978 and 2003, about 700,200 Chinese studied abroad. By March 2004, only 172,800 of them had returned. But in 2003 the number of students returning rose to more than 20,000 — a 12.3 percent increase on the previous year.

Although a survey of this kind could be expected to produce largely China-friendly findings — Elite Reference is a subsidiary of the China Youth Daily newspaper group — a considerable number of students polled did express a reluctance to return. About 70 percent cited a "complicated relation network" as their chief reason for not wanting to go back to China. This refers to the custom of guanxi — connections — that underpins business in China. For those with good connections a return to a country where they can pull strings to secure a good job is attractive. Those without, may find the idea of competing abroad on a level playing field a much better alternative.

China’s lower standard of living also encourages many to remain abroad. But for those who do return, employment prospects seem rosy. The survey found that about 70 percent of returned students find a job within six months of their return, with more than 30 percent working for foreign companies.