While we’re bickering here in Lebanon about local power sharing, others are taking a look at larger pictures.
Coming soon to a Gulf state near you…
Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington and chief negotiator with Syria, wrote in Haaretz on the wave of academic imports from the west to Gulf states like Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. He finds NYU’s upcoming branch in Abu Dhabi a particularly interesting “experiment”: (emphasis mine)
This means that students in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the authorities of this principality, would be exposed to the full benefits and demands of a major American university and liberal arts education – admission standards, academic freedom and a curriculum that includes the Christian and Jewish dimensions of Western civilization.
Mr. Rabinovich thinks that on the balance, the trend is good news for Israel.
Aside from the institutional values of a school like the highly respected NYU, it is important to note that the Gulf elites are less preoccupied with Israel and more concerned with imminent threats to their security, primarily the Iranian challenge. It’s true that a failure to modernize has weakened the Arab world, and has in part enabled the small Israeli state to stand up against the much larger Arab collective.
But the flip side of the failure to modernize has been the persistence of values and attitudes that have contributed to the inability of successive efforts to terminate the conflict.Israelis, then, have a stake in the long-term effects that liberal arts education would have on the region. The transition from conflict to peace requires, among other things, the need to abandon the mentality of a zero-sum game. From that vantage point, the arrival of genuine liberal arts education in the Arab world’s eastern part is good news for Israel as well.
I personally am not too convinced of the transformational value of these institutions. After all, the “elites” have always attended schools in Europe and the US, and as the experience of Hezbollah students in AUB shows us, a liberal democratic institution can accentuate attitudes that exist in some sections of the Arab populations.
I really want to know your opinion on this. Read the article and tell me, is it a good idea to “transplant” westerm academic and cultural institutions in illiberal environments? Is Lebanon as a model melting pot, cultural and academic, a thing of the past?
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
Me thinks US academia has long ditched freedom and judeo-christian values in favor of PC and third-worldism crap of which we have more than enough.
Still NYU may be better than a Pakistani Madrassah but not by much.
PS Mus, did you figure out my link problem??
You’re back on the roll josey. My reader now gets your feed..
Just an initial thought to counter Rabinovich’s arguments is the very first sentence of his article: even with a western university like AUB, Lebanon has proven to be the most aggressive country against Israel.
Assuming that more of the same would be good for Israel, is a rather peculiar conclusion, to say the least:-)
Riemer
It seems to me your initial thought does not necessarily counter the argument, I think the proximity of Lebanon is what made it as aggressive towards Israel regardless of the (positive) effect of western universities.
I also agree with Josey, even though I barely know about the issue, but if the rise of Creationism in the US is any indication, the state of US academia does not look bright lately.
It comes with a twist of irony, that the “black Arabs” (‘Arab al H’alig’ , I think you call them), the southern Arabs from the desert, the mostly ignored, that 80 years ago, no Arab really had any interest in, they are going to bring the change to the decaying Arab existence of the north.
And hey, You [YOU] (!!!) and you are paying for all this.! You and you and me, who buy the petrol from them. So in fact we all finance this “Judeo-Christian” stuff…
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The Annunciation, Arab al H’alig style:
‘Kalima’ project.
http://www.kalima.ae/eng.php
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The issue is not matter of JC values especially when it comes to Lebanon. I think Lebanon has the potential to be the meeting point of all thoughts and ideologies. The problem is the GUN! Lebanese are very open minded people. However, if HA and other extremist organizations as well every other “sectarian” party (Future included) keep people dependent of them nothing will bear fruit until radical changes are affected in the culture. People are dependent of them financially, socially and culturally. To survive: Hobson’s choice! The most effective weapon is (re)creating institutions and abide by laws…This is not a “western” idea…However; it clashes with the totalitarian blood sucking regime’s modus operandi.
Let’s not make everything a clash of west vs. east. How democratic is Hizb??Future? PSP?? Marada? Amal? Kataeb?? Etc…etc…
This is a feudal society who’s “pashas” will never give up their spoils. Democracy entails engaging the intellectual class and having a charter of freedom and rights. How liberal is the Israeli society when they treat Moslems as second class citizens?
In the end, what’s behind NYU in the Gulf is ECONOMICS not academics.
With the US patriot act and the tightening security on US borders (especially as regards folks coming to study here, from the Arab and Muslim worlds), American universities have lost a sizeable chunk of their lucrative Arab student body. Cornell remedied that a few years back, as has Johns Hopkins and a number of other prestegious American schools, by opening campuses in the Gulf… And by doing that, they have diluted and weakened their tenor, prestige, and academic significance (not to say their flagships’ reputation for academic freedom and diversity of perspective.)
So, yes, I think it is economics above all else. But I also agree with JW that the American academy has long since shirked its obligation to academic honesty, freedom, diversity of perspective, and a broader contextualization of history and the liberal arts (Judeo Christian “values” in sum)… All that, for the sake of academic inanity (and its lovechild, political correctness..) btw, that too (that is the use of the academy as a bully pulpit for ideological advocacy, anti-”Orientalist” pseudo-intellectualism, and political agitprop… btw, Ed Sa’id’s “Orientalism” has long since been debunked, yet it remains the darling of the academy’s aparatchiks…) Anyway, that too is the result of economics! American institutions of higher learning nowadays are flooded with gifts and endowments issuing from Gulf countries. And as a famous American adage goes, “money talks and bullshit walks”! So, with this blood-money with which new academic Chairs are bought (excuse me, “endowed”) and academic complexes are erected etc.. you can imagine the mind boggling number of bullshit artists and political advocates and demagogues that are currently roaming our campuses and polluting the minds of our young with tendentious “scholarship” and historical howlers. Not only that, but grants, appointments, promotions, publication, and the general workplace atmospherics at American universities (receiving Arab money) are all affected by whether or not one is willing to submit to exponents of select historical perceptions and attitudes (especially as regards Islam, the Middle East, and the latter’s alleged monolithic peoples and cultures.)
Itamar is usually sharp and right on the money! But he must have caught something during his recent (visiting) tenure at Harvard. It seems that, as things go for acadcemics, the richer one becomes, the less scrupulous his or her scholarship.
To quote a famous Clinton, “it’s the economy stupid!”
To sum Mr. Rabinovich’s argument then, it is the Arab’s illiberal education that has not brought peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And exactly what liberal Judeo-Christian values concocted the idea of usurping Palestine from its inhabitants, kicking them off the land and continuing to exact on them death and misery for the better part of six decades now simply because they choose to resist?
Is resisting an occupier not a Judeo-Christian value? And why is Mr. rabinovich circumventing the Palestinian and going straight to the Gulf Arab? How would a Western education make a Palestinian re-appraise his struggle against foreigners who have taken his land, killed his brethren and are holding him hostage?
Ah..if only the Gulf Arab had a Western education, then we can sweep all these historical and present injustices down the Gulf. If only the native understood the colonialist’s mindset, then he’ll come to appreciate the benignity of the occupation and how this is all for his own betterment.
The Arab jeremiads about some rapacious Western Judeo-Christian “usurpation” of Palestine really take the cake, Ali. Let’s talk about usurpation for a minute, shall we?
For a thousand years after the death of the prophet Muhammad, dar al-Islam continued to wage Jihad successfully and usurp (to use your favored cypher) Judeo-Christian lands (Palestine included.)
During those 1000 years, Muslim armies conquered three quarters of the Christian world (present day Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, north Africa, and parts of Anatolia included.) This conquest and usurpation, despite efforts by the Western Roman and Byzantine Roman empires, went unabated. The Crusades of 11th and 12th centuries were a delayed reaction to Muslim usurpation of Christian lands. It’s a long story that Middle Eastern history books choose to ignore…. But why not think of the “Western” usurpation of “Palestine” as a forced restitution of what was taken from the “West” by force?? A reconquista not unlike the Spanish reconquista!
Why the selective reading of history Ali?
The Arab conquest did not happen in a vacuum!
A chart of those events, color coded and all:
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_crusades01.htm
I once asked a Pakistani if he thought that “swept” meant that Muslims entered those cities with brooms.
Why the selective reading of history Harfouche?
I am in no position to defend what Muslims did in the 8th and 9th centuries, though one can discuss marked differences between what the Muslims did, and what the modern-day colonialist Zionist Jews are doing. But if you want to dig up history, then let’s discuss Palestine (more specifically Canaan) before the Hebrews embarked on their holy war and went on a macabre extermination program that saw the almost complete annihilation of the local Canaanites (on very specific blood-curdling orders from Yahweh himself).
The fact is we have a Palestinian population under present-day occupation whose lives are being suffocated while their land is surreptitiously stolen from underneath them. In addition, many of the refugees caused by the creation of a Jewish homeland (a very liberal, multicultural idea indeed), are still alive today still holding the keys to their homes.
This is not ancient history. This is happening as we speak.
But hey, what does it matter to you. From your comment you, appointing yourself the Judeo-Christian spokesperson, consider this a tit-for-tat against the Muslim invaders. Although this must get morally ambiguous for you when you consider that your two exemplary Christian resurgences from history (the Crusades and the Reconquista) exacted as much bloody revenge against the Jews as they did against the hated Muslims.
So where does this ‘forced restitution” stop? While they have the power, will the Zionists go on their “Manifest Destiny” of restoring all of Judea and Samaria (which should include much of Lebanon as well)?
LNH is right and Ali show how right he is. Ali got JC education. And he talk like a brain washed illiterate. Soon he will tell that the Jews have had nothing to do with Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Beit Lehem (the house of bread [Hebrew ]not of butchers & meat[ Arabic]) ever. Things are not that simple. My family lived in South Lebanon since times immemorial, surely befor Islam and befor Arabic. At about 1860 it became clear to them that between Christian and Druz they had no future there, so they moved south. Everybody then, Muslim & Christians of all kinds knew about the relationships of Jews to their Land. Other Jews in the lands of Islam did the same. Where are the Jews of Iraq? Egypt? Syria? Lebanon? Without these Jews there will be no Israel, so in some way the land was divided between the occupants. As of now about 60-70% of the Jews in Israel are from Muslim countries and/or were born in Israel. They have as much right to be there as any USA, NZ, Australian ect. ect. Funny that Muslims can go and live all over the world and even today, as in the Balkan, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan ect. change the population structure and Jews are not supposed to do that. Also the land between the sea and the Jordan and Lebanon and the Red sea holds now about 9-10 million people, at most it held 1.5 millions in 1948-1950. There is place there for all these people and if peace will come? It can be even better. As for Arabs being 2nd class citizens? please check the fate of the Druz people of the Golan. They are now in Israel the most free Syrian citizens in the whole world, in any way you can measure freedom. They also are probably the richest and the most mechanized Syrian farmers. They simply decided that as much as they hate Israel it is not their job to be sword of the Arabs and Islam. Also for some funny reason Israel is the only country in the ME where christianity is growing. The problem on both sides are these who preach permanent war. I stop, this is a blog not a book. As to the question? Taking NYU to the Arabian gulf is like taking there a white bear. If the environment will not be right it will die, and in the best case it will be a zoo situation. An educational institurtion can produce what it is supposed to produce only in the suitable comprehensive environment. But if it will be mixed – male female also in the living sleeping area it will be more fun than a Madrasa or a Jewish Yeshiva. And if it will not be mixed? well as LNH said it will not be NYU any more, will it? Education is not class, teacher and vidio arts (used to be chalk and black board) no it is not.
Hazbani- based on your lucid and sophisticated prose, it makes sense that you get to judge the level of my literacy.
As an atheist I find the notion of “Judeo-Christian values” as a source of liberalisation laughable. The Western success story started with the Enlightenment and not its Judeo-Christian roots. It was in fact a move away from the religious dogma that is behind the “Western” success story of the past few centuries.
UmKay Lemon, but how does that disolve the fact that Western enlightenment, and its consequent Art, Music, Literature, Ethics, Architecture, Philosophy, and every other outcome of human creativity, were ALL the legacy of the JC tradition? Take a stroll down any little street in Italy or inside any hole in the wall museum in Paris, and tell me whether or not what you see, touch, and hear, has not been touched by the genius of the JC tradition
Saying that the JC tradition had nothing to do with the Enlightenment is like trying to argue that Russians had nothing to do with Communism. Silly negationism!
The core values of the Enlightenment were undeniably JC, not to say Christian. You might not like that fact, but this might help, perhaps:
1- Buffon (builder of Paris’ Museum de l’histoire naturelle, and a student of the Jesuits)
2- Condorcet, (product of Jesuit education)
3- Diderot (product of Jesuit education)
4- Herder (a clergyman and one of the forefathers of the modern idea of “nationalism”, and a mentor to Goethe)
5- Kant (a student of Jesuits)
6- Voltaire (freedom of religion, civil liberties, etc…, YES, a student of Jesuits)
7- Lavoisier
8- Bach
9- Handel
10- Haydn
11- Mozart
12- Beethoven
13- David
14- Montaigne
15- Descartes
LNH,
It is laughable that you equate something that happened over a thousand years ago with what is happening now, affecting palestinains that are still alive and living amongst us.
What amazes me is that christian zionists like you fail to see that there are palestinian christians that are suffereing right along with the palestinian muslims.
As far as the “muslim crusades” go, you also fail to mention that many of the christians of the region e.g the Copts welcomed the muslims since they were being presecuted and butchered as apostates by their own co-religionists who were in power then.
Stop living in the past dear LNH, and dwelling in things you can do nothing about anynmore. There is a tragedy going on right now with real live human beings being treated like animals. If the Muslims among them don’t matter to you, remember that a big portion of those human beings are Christians, the real desendents of the first followers of Jesus Christ who are still living on his lands. If you do not see this as a humanitarian issue regardless of religion, then at least stand up for your fellow Palestian Christians when they are being presecuted by the latter day zionists. Only then, would you be a true follower of Christ.
here’s an example if you want to see a sliver of what is really happeneing in the land you love so much:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1329380,00.html
Please Ali, don’t sugar-coat the Arab-Muslim conquests, and don’t try to pass them on as some sort of compassionate brutality (that supposedly paled by comparison to what preceded and what came after them)! That is outrageous anti-intellectualism (albeit an outcome of Western, Judeo-Christian scholarship with a bad conscience.)
I for one have no compunctions whatsoever about the Crusades or the Reconquistas or the restitution of the Jews to their ancestral land! (The Palestinians’ dispute with Israel is theirs, not mine.) But besides the fact that the Crusades were an utter failure, I have no regrets whatsoever about them or the restitution of ANY ancient Middle Eastern peoples to their lands; including Canaanites, Assyrians, etc.. btw, Enlightenment writers (Voltaire etc…) ridiculed the Crusades as wars of intolerance waged at the behest of a power-hungry clergy (any parallels to Islam? Medieval and modern?? hint hint wink wink???)
Those same enlightenment writers (so eager to decry and ridicule European/Christian institutional religion) were the same ones who romanticized the image of Saladin and other Muslim warriors, Muhammad included, depicting them as compassionate gentlemen. That image, of course, flies in the face of Muslim history and the history of the Muslim conquest, which was waged with the brutality and zeal of any other people convinced of their “divine” mission (again, wink wink.) The Muslim-Arab conquest WAS NOT an act of charity, piety, and love, okay? Had Saladin not been brutal, he would not have lasted a single day in the predatory universe in which he was born.
The Arabs were conquerors in the Middle East (like many others who came before and after them…) For you to make the argument that they were less vicious and less brutals than others is simply ridiculous.
Supression, repression, brutality, and YES GENOCIDE and ETHNIC CLEANSING and LARGE SCALE DEPORTATIONS WERE committed by Arabs (anything less would have been considered dereliction of duty by the conquering Muslims and by standards of the times.) For you to deny that is not only selective (or doctored-up) history, Ali, it is outright hypocrisy…
Finally, I’m not interested either in the “who’s a more viscious God, Yahweh or Allah?” pisser in the wind argument!!
Suffice it to say that neither Christianity nor Judaism had a well-defined concept of holy war (comparable to Jihad) before the Middle Ages and before their encounters with Islam… Islam is the first instance in documented history where religion becomes an instrument of statecraft and conquest and warfare. True, Augustine argued that warfare was at times a necessary evil, but he still warned against it and against using war as a tool of the church, and he insisted that Christians NOT engage in wars of religious conversion or for the purpose of destroying heresies. (That’s not how things work with Islam.)
My point is that in Christianity and Judaism THERE IS A THEOLOGY against wars of religion. On the other hand, the prosperous 7th century Arabian merchant Muhammad founded a new religion almost entirely predicated on wars of conversion. Justice, politics, AND war are ALL built in the bedrock of the religion of Islam (submission). Muhammad himself waged war and exhorted his followers to do the same.
Enough said!
Visitor, spare me, please! Palestinian Christians fared much better under the hated Zionists than they are today. Talk to any Joe Schmoe who’s not looking over his shoulder, and he’ll tell you that much.
I never said that Christians were less brutal than Muslims, ONLY that there is not concept of an institutional “religious war” in Christian theology! That doesn’t mean that individual Christians did not instrumentalize religion for political purposes (please see comment above, esp. re: Augustine. The fact remains that “religious war” as such goes against the precepts of Christianity. In Islam Religion, Politics, and War are one in the same, whichever way you cut it.)
LNH,
In spite of what Augustine warned against, that is not the history of the Christian Church. No need to pull a list of misdeeds here.
But this is not the place to joust about theological fine points of war and warfare between the different Abrahamic religions. Neither did I attempt to defend what the Muslims had perpetrated centuries ago. You decided to read my mind and unleashed a polemic..
It does not matter to me whether war is more an article of faith with the Muslims than the other two religions or not. If I were a Muslim at the time of the Crusades, it would be pointless to discuss whether the approaching Franks came as an order of faith or because of a more mundane happenstance. And the Palestinian today does not care whether the decision to take his land away originated in some Yeshiva or happens to be the brainchild of historical figures with more worldly aims. The impact on him is the same.
But I feel we have digressed. The question was whether a JC liberal education in the Arab world leads to peace in Palestine. I intimated that the question was a red-herring, and a shirking of responsibility by the guilty parties to the injustice they perpetrated against the Palestinians. That’s all.
The Arabs need to build their own elite universties
Why do they all send their kids off to other countries?
If they trully want respect in this world – their universities must be top notch, and have things to teach westerners
most important is that the sons and daughters of the arab elite must go to these arab universties, create the “traditions” and make them the envy of the west
Yes Ali knows English much better than me. As for his history ancient and new?, one reason for an Arabic NYU. And also he failed again and again and then again to see that the injustices perpetuated by him and his like are one of the causes for the existance of Israel.
And as for the Elephant in the room [the one nobody is talking about ] In my life time the Christians were having equal part in running Lebanon. Now they are divided into the “Christians of the Sunna” and the “Christians of the Shiaa” and somebody on this blog is offering them the future of the Copts of Egypt including protection from their fellow christians. And what are Arameic-Syriac speaking Christian peasants from Syria doing in Sweden? Did the evil Zionists brought them there?
Back to the main subject, Will the Jewish teachers in the new NYU be able to built a Synaguge? or will it be a Jew less or Synaguge less NYU. O and how many churches will be allowed in this new NYU? Will every body be able to go over the Border to visit KSA? will they get two passports? one for Israel and the rest of the world and the other for KSA? Will every body allowed into the new NYU? Just to hear Seminars ? even Bangladeshi maids? Pakistani workers? Will it be a separated sexes, separated relgions, separated citizenship NYU? Will I, an Israeli, be accepted there to study better English?
Hi Beirut Spring,
First time here, but thanks to itoot it’s possible.
Very interesting post..and my thoughts on this are as follows. Universities flourish by the quality of students, quality of teachers, quality of research and quality of the administration.
You cannot export a well respected uni into an untested environment. Thus i don’t attach much value to the NYU in Abu Dhabi as opposed to NY.
I believe this is true if the NYU decided to open a branch in California, say.
However let’s be honest, academic institutions become stronger with the links they have with other universities. As thus, if a University of Abu Dhabi was established then in my opinion that’s more in the interest of the Sheikhdom than an imported university.
This new university of AD can have professors from all over the world, hell even bring them from Tel Aviv. All is possible in the name of education.
I think it’s great to send students out as well. The UAE has been sponsoring students for many decades in the UK, Europe and USA.. I think this, along with a local home grown uni is better than importing NYU.
You can invite NYU guys in to local universities.
Was Cambridge founded by some guys from Oxford? Was Al Zaytuna founded by some dudes from Al Azhar?
Me things all respecting universities were founded by serious guys with a vision. Not guys wanting to import a good model. This is not like using successful franchises like Starbucks!
The issue is not matter of JC values especially when it comes to Lebanon. I think Lebanon has the potential to be the meeting point of all thoughts and ideologies. The problem is the GUN! Lebanese are very open minded people.
Maybe. But maybe a bigger problem is that Lebanese don’t fight tyranny as much as Jews and Christians do.
From the article: “This means that students in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the authorities of this principality, would be exposed to the full benefits and demands of a major American university and liberal arts education – admission standards, academic freedom…”
Academic freedom as in America…hrm…more and more you hear about academic freedom being curtailed the moment you speak about Israel in a negative way. So to take American universities as beacons of freedom is perhaps not the best choice.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how free this NYU branch in the UAE will truly be. Will it allow a critical approach towards the Koran, pointing out factual errors, e.g. or discussing the taboo subject of multiple historic versions of the Koran?
Would teachers be able to talk about the history of the spreading of Islam which apparently (I’m not an expert here) was much more violent than the Crusades? . Would they be able to critically discuss the hindering role of Islam vis-a-vis human rights? Would they be able to talk about such a simple thing as democracy?
If all of this were true, then yes, it would be a great addition to the Arab world. Otherwise, it remains a dress-up to hide the academic lagging behind in comparison with the west.
Still, to expect that education leads to better people (“better”, as in ‘friendly towards Israel, now that’s already debatable in the first place), is a different topic altogether.
As Mustapha already pointed out, many elite Arabs have taken their education abroad and are fully well familiar with western values. Yet, that doesn’t mean they want to or even can implement such values in their own societies.
Mr. Rabinovich’s position is from a self-ascribed morally superior position. Basically, what he’s saying is that the Muslims will become more friendly towards us if they become more educated (read: less stupid). Perhaps it’s me, but he certainly sounds paternalistic and arrogant.
While it’s true that many Arabs have gone abroad and failed to work for reform upon their reform, I still think opening NYU is a good idea. Hopefully such universities will provide a forum for free circulation of ideas (well, probably not a completely open forum–but still more so than before). An open forum is always a good thing, I think, because it challenges our ideas and forces us to think. Though of course such conversations sometimes degenerates into mindless squabbling, but this is the price of free speech.
More to the point, universities are traditionally centers of radicalism and new thought around the world, so the NYU may well give the reformation process a boost. Not to mention the fact that a new university equals more education for more people–again, always a good thing.
Although I’d say that the Judeo-Christian tradition probably influenced Western liberalism, as JC is after all quite prominent in Western civilization, I do no think that Western liberalism is necessarily JC itself. As a previous commentator pointed out, the Enlightenment–the source of such liberalism–was a SECULAR movement.
As for improving relations with Israel, well, it’d be great if this NYU magically solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or at least broke the current deadlock), but somehow I doubt that’s going to happen. It’s quite possible that a couple of students, after an intensive study of Jewish history/Middle Eastern conflicts/political science/whatever will become more positively inclined towards the Jewish state, but I doubt there will be any major change in opinion as a result. These kids are Arabs; they’ll be naturally inclined to support the Palestinians, just as I’m naturally inclined to support the Jews. For now, let’s just start with Holocaust recognition, okay?