[LINK] "Gulf Science"

[rfmcdonald]

At 'Aqoul, the Lounsbury comments on a Financial Times article that discusses the efforts of Persian Gulf states to establish thriving and indigenized academic cultures, the sorts of cultures that (it is theorized) would make the Middle East a centre of technical innovation.

The Arab world used to be a prime place for science, research and technology, but in the past couple of centuries it has deteriorated a lot, due to politics and ignorance. Things finally look like they are getting better now,” says Wael al-Delaimy, an associate professor of medicine at University of California, San Diego.

Abu Dhabi, for example, intends to pump Dh4.9bn ($1.3bn) into research and development by 2018 under a strategic plan for higher education announced last month. The emirate’s plan calls for 28 per cent of its graduates to be in engineering-related areas. But currently only about 9 per cent of higher education students are in those fields, says the Abu Dhabi Education Council.

Institutions such as the Qatar Foundation, home to branches of six US universities, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, and the Sorbonne and New York university branches being established in Abu Dhabi, are trying to fill the shortfall. Most are teaching establishments for undergraduates. But the intention is that, with time, they will conduct research and award doctorates. ....
Not all has gone well. This month John Perkins, the provost of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute, said he was leaving for “personal reasons”. The Masdar Institute has been formed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aims to carry out research in renewable technologies. ....

“They [the universities] are slowly beginning to realise that money cannot buy people, especially scientists,” says Hilal Lashuel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. “The lack of equal treatment is a major problem. Hiring and pay is based on nationality and not merit, and Arab scientists are often disadvantaged when it comes to both.”

In Dubai, Tarik Yousef, the dean of the Dubai School of Government, a think tank, agrees that a research culture cannot be developed remotely or by one and two-week visits. .... “I don’t think they [the universities] are going about it the right way. Who are they using to recruit people? [They use] this executive approach,” Mr Yousef says. Some universities are losing as many people each year as they recruit, he says. ....

“Academics want time for research – and they want to be rewarded . . . It has to be a two-way conversation,” he says. “The first question people ask me is: what is my teaching load? How much administrative work am I going to have to do? Am I going to be able to organise seminars and attend conferences and deliver papers?”

Another issue is citizenship. Gulf states have historically granted citizenship grudgingly if at all. In a globalised business such as academia where people prefer not to move frequently, the prospect of working for decades in a country and then being denied the right to stay there is unattractive.

Beginning by commenting that the Persian Gulf states are not synonymous with the Arab world--their oil wealth aside, the Persian Gulf states combined don't have the population of Egypt--the Lounsbury suggests that the more traditionalist and family-oriented culture of the Persian Gulf states won't allow for the merit-based system necessary for a successful academic culture, unlike in other Arab societies that have seen more modernization (Egypt, the Maghreb, "even Jordan").