介紹海灣國家年輕學人研究該國政治的局限與隱憂
Education in the Gulf
The contradictions of study
abroad
Aug 9th 2012, 15:18 by The
Economist online | EXETER
ON A bright summer day in
Exeter, a university town in the south-west of England, an array of Gulf
academics mingle to discuss the changes afoot in their countries, keeping an
eye out for government officials, pro-royal lobbyists, and a handful of
security-service people from Abu Dhabi, the richest of the United Arab Emirates
(UAE).
Gulf youngsters wishing to
study the politics and histories of their countries often go abroad to do so,
since those subjects are generally too sensitive for their universities back
home. Many are on government
scholarships. Saudi Arabia, for instance, sends 130,000 students abroad each
year. Half go to America, tens of thousands come to Britain and a small but
growing pool—still in the hundreds rather than thousands—head to China.
Investment in education in
the Gulf is growing, with Qatar to the fore. Its Education City project has attracted satellite campuses in the
Gulf from respected American institutions such as Georgetown and Texas A&M. A handful of such outfits are beginning to offer
courses on the region itself. The American University of Kuwait recently launched
the country’s first course in Gulf history.
But Gulf autocracies and
academic freedoms are not always an easy fit. Last month there was a wave of arrests of activists, bloggers,
journalists and lawyers in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, often
without any formal charges being brought. In the past year all those countries
and Kuwait have charged people with the ill-defined offence of “insulting the
ruler”, sometimes merely for a cheeky Facebook posting. Meanwhile, Islamist
members of parliament in Kuwait have demanded the death penalty for
“blasphemers”. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia said that a young man who had
written a few lines of poetry about the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter should be
tried.
Even in Exeter and
Cambridge, where British universities take advantage of Gulf citizens who long
for cooler climes to host big shindigs on Gulf studies every summer, young researchers are wary about what they say in public. Last year the authorities in Bahrain asked its overseas
students to sign loyalty pledges, including a promise to report on fellow
students involved in potentially embarrassing activities, such as
demonstrations. This year an adviser to Bahrain’s
government pitched into a discussion at Exeter, complaining that two Bahraini
analysts were “tarnishing the image of the country”—a crime back at home.
When Westerners criticise the Gulf,
it often raises hackles, provoking accusations of imperialism. Many Gulf
citizens would rather have lively discussions at home than criticise their
governments on foreign soil. But if indigenous universities are to develop
authentic studies of their own societies, they need to loosen their
restrictions on free speech. Yet the Western education they regard as most
prestigious requires a degree of academic freedom that most governments in the
Gulf are still unwilling to grant.
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