Jordan Times
Friday, September 21, 2007

Jordan helping international agency save Iraq scholars

By Linda Hindi

AMMAN - Jordan’s educational institutions are taking part in an Iraqi scholar rescue mission following a series of kidnappings and killings of academics in war-torn Iraq.

Officials from the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) said they have been in talks with education officials here, who welcomed the effort and offered help.

“We are all grateful for what Jordan is doing in caring for large numbers of Iraqis and especially happy with their support for Iraq’s scholars who are considered as an asset for the region and the world,” IIE CEO Allan Goodman told The Jordan Times, commenting on the outcome of a visit by the fund to Jordan in June.

The fund’s chief and vice chairman of the IIE, Henry Jarecki, said in a telephone interview from New York: “Education Ministry and others such as the University of Jordan opened their doors to help the inflow of first-class intellectuals. We sent curriculum vitae for senior scholars whom we thought would benefit Jordan and are in contact with the education authorities to help place them.”

According to these officials, under the support of His Majesty King Abdullah’s vision to further enhance the intellectual capital of Jordan, their delegation was welcomed “enthusiastically”.

HRH Princess Ghida Talal was noted to be a large contributor in furthering their mission in Jordan.

During the visit, the institute hired an Iraqi woman scholar, Hala Fattah, who has lived in Jordan for two decades to become a local correspondent. Fattah will manage an office based in the capital that will work to find host institutions.

An UCLA graduate with a PhD in Middle Eastern History, Fattah told The Jordan Times from a SRF meeting in Washington that “preserving education” in Iraq was a top priority and the agency is working to develop mechanisms that will help professors teach their Iraqi students through distance learning technology.

SRF Project Director Nada Soze said it is important to place the senior intellectuals in the MENA region to avoid the brain drain when order returns to Iraq.

“The most important thing is that once professors are out of Iraq they keep in contact with their students,” she said.

For the Iraqi fund, the organisation aims to raise around $15 million of which around 75 per cent has been endowed. The Gates Foundation, for example, provided the fund with $5 million.

Director of Strategic Partnerships for IIE/SRF Jim Miller said that current funding will allow the rescue of around 150-175 scholars.

The IIE/SRF is providing fellowships for persecuted scholars to help them find safe havens via temporary visits to institutions in any safe country around the world.

The aim of the effort is to help preserve humanity’s intellectual capital, saving one voice at a time.

“Each scholar saved rescues not only people but also ideas,” an IIE statement reads.

As an independent, nonprofit organisation functioning since 1919, the IIE has been a world heavyweight in international education and training for decades and administers over 200 programmes annually.

Although the organisation has been involved in scholar rescue missions since the early 1920s, these efforts were institutionalised in 2002 when a $50 million endowment fund was created specifically for saving scholars.

The fund has since helped save the voices of 155 academics from three-dozen countries, according to the IIE.

In Baghdad over past two years, the mass abduction from a science research institute and the bombings of Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University and booksellers market are some of the dramatic events that prove systematic persecution and have been closely observed by the organisation, the IIE statement said.

SRF fund’s director said that over the past five years the organisation was receiving around 40 applications a month from victimised scholars from around the world. Over the past year, however, the fund was witnessing around 40 to 50 applications a week from Iraq alone.

“The Iraqi scholars were uniformly more qualified than most of the other perspective fellowship recipients. We concluded that an Iraq programme needed to be set up,” Jarecki said.

Jarecki recalled a meeting with Iraqi Minister of Higher Education Abid Ajeely and said that the minister regrets that it is tough to make real contributions to the education sector while 50 per cent of his job is security operations like negotiating with people whose relatives are kidnapped, ransom requests, surveillance cameras and gated schools.

The IIE/SRF officials noted that their organisation played a historic role in saving lives and thus ideas that have helped shape the intellectual world.

A list of previous rescues includes scholars from Italy during the Mussolini era and hundreds targeted during World War II, many of whom went on to become Nobel laureates.

The SRF will aim to place around 200 of the most threatened senior Iraqi scholars within the next two years across the Middle East and North Africa region.

It was decided to choose their surrounding region “both in order to minimise language and culture difficulties and to ensure that scholars are in a position to quickly return to help rebuild Iraq once the conflict subsides,” according to an IIE statement.

Based in New York City, the organisation has 18 offices around the world and employs a staff of 450 worldwide, according to www.iie.org.