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CAMBRIDGE -- Iraq's deputy minister of higher
education moved slowly through the Harvard Museum of
Natural History, transfixed by the gemstones and
mineral formations on display. Beriwan M. Khailany
who, as a Kurd said the exhibits reminded her of the
bygone riches of Iraqi education.
''When I graduated in the mid-'70s we had these in
our labs," said Khailany, a geologist by training,
as she pointed to a dazzling green chunk of
malachite. ''But now, with the looting, our students
will never have a chance to see them."
Khailany and 10 officials and professors from the
University of Baghdad, a 48-year-old institution in
the heart of Iraq's violence-plagued capital, are in
town this week, seeking support from Harvard, Boston
University, and MIT to rebuild their battered
school, restock their labs with modern equipment,
and update their curriculums to include emerging
fields like nanotechnology and biotechnology.
In the face of grave challenges posed by the
continuing violence in Iraq, members of the group
are focused on restoring their university's
reputation and helping to lift up their homeland.
''If you are reforming higher education, you are
reforming the whole society," Khailany told Urbain
DeWinter, BU's associate provost for international
programs. ''Our students are from all around the
country, and they will bring what they learn to
their families."
At home, Iraqi academics are targets for
assassination, with at least 50 having been killed
in the last two years. Their campus buildings,
books, and lab equipment have been looted and
burned. A recent United Nations report said that 84
percent of higher education's physical
infrastructure had been severely damaged. Even
today, electricity runs only half the time at the
University of Baghdad.
The Iraqis arrived frustrated with the United States
and American universities for having failed in the
last two years to offer much support to Iraqi
universities. At a Harvard forum attended by about
90 people Monday, the University of Baghdad's
president, Mosa Aziz al-Mosawe, said that Britain,
France, Australia, and Iran had all been more
forthcoming with assistance than the United States.
The group couldn't get visas to come to the United
States for a year and a half after being invited by
Richard Wilson, an emeritus physics professor at
Harvard. Visas came through only because the US Army
arranged a visit to West Point, where the group will
spend most of July after a few days in Washington,
D.C.
Even when institutions like the World Bank have
promised help, follow-through has been rare, the
academics said, partly because of the security
situation in Iraq.
The main goal of their visit was to make connections
with local academics. Still, everywhere they went
this week, the Iraqis made energetic pitches for
direct support. At BU, provost David Campbell said
he might be able to find some money in his budget to
help support a planned conference in Baghdad for
Iraqi expatriate academics to advise their
counterparts who stayed behind. Officials seemed
open to Mosawe's request to find some room on campus
for professors on sabbatical or for doctoral
students who need lab equipment not available in
Baghdad, and they agreed to develop a written plan
for how BU can help the Iraqis.
At Harvard, where the group met with president
Lawrence H. Summers, two faculty members warned the
visitors not to expect special treatment for their
graduate students.
''I'm being very frank," geology professor Heinrich
Holland told two of the Iraqis. ''The students
coming from Iraq must be first rate. I would be very
surprised if University of Baghdad students were
admitted who didn't demonstrate that they could
compete with the rest of our students. Otherwise
it's a terrible situation for everybody."
Holland said later that he was optimistic he could
arrange for some Iraqi geology professors to visit
Harvard on sabbatical.
''So many people, including me, think we've done an
awful lot of damage over there," Holland said. ''We
need to help them get back on their feet."
Members of the Iraqi delegation were also eager to
learn about OpenCourseWare, an MIT initiative that
makes course materials available on the Web free of
charge. A local Iraqi-American businessman has
offered to buy the University of Baghdad a server to
download the initiative's files, so that faculty and
students could use them without relying on their
slow and unreliable Internet connection. The Iraqis
also asked for lab equipment the schools no longer
needed, but they emphasized that curriculum advice
and learning opportunities for their students are
more important than donations.
For 20 years under Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi
intellectuals were not allowed to study or attend
conferences abroad or subscribe to international
journals. And because English was banned from
science and engineering classes, few in the current
generation of Iraqi students possess the English
skills necessary to study in the United States.
Many of the academics were reluctant to talk about
the dangers they face at home, but Shakir Mustafa,
an Iraqi-American professor of Arabic and Irish
studies at BU, said the visitors told him that some
of them occasionally sleep in their offices to avoid
the dangers of traveling home.
A University of Baghdad pharmacy student who was
active in a Shi'ite political party was gunned down
in May, just hours after he had argued with a member
of the staff of the pharmacy school dean, who is a
Sunni. The killing sparked a riot, classes were
canceled, and the dean reportedly fled the country.
''They are taking tremendous risks out of a sense of
public responsibility," Mustafa said. ''To kill a
chair or a dean gets an extra bang. It's a resilient
society; that's what comes through. These people are
not just going to lie down and accept things."
The Iraqis preferred to talk about what Khailany --
who, as a Kurd, never could have held a high
government position under Hussein's regime -- called
the ''bright side." Exams went off this year without
a hitch. University salaries have just doubled, from
$500 a month to $1,000 for a full professor, they
said. And they take heart in a poster that has been
popping up all over campus with an adage about
keeping conflict out of the university: ''When
politics comes in the door, science escapes out the
window."
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