Iraqi Students Set a New Course
Culture of Open Debate Sweeps Across Baghdad University
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 2, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Two young women strolled arm in arm toward the university bus stop, giddy with relief that final exams were over. Around them surged a stream of students as diverse as it was high-spirited: girls in modest black veils or skin-tight fashion ensembles, trim-bearded Shiite and clean-shaven Sunni Muslim youths, minority Kurds and Christians.
The two friends, stopping to chat with a journalist, unhesitatingly blurted out their strongly felt views. Samar, 18, said former president Saddam Hussein's leadership had given Iraq "dignity and respect" and that she prayed U.S. forces would not arrest or harm him.
Hendrahd, also 18, said her father had been executed a decade ago by the Hussein government and was probably buried in a mass grave. "I hope the American troops find Saddam soon and kill him," she said firmly. Then, giggling at their own boldness, the pair hurried to catch their bus.
The brief but frank encounter offered a glimpse of the liberating change that has swept across Baghdad University, a sprawling system of 70,000 students and 13 schools, since it reopened in late May after three months of chaos that left many of its facilities looted and burned.
Gone are the youthful spies who once mingled with students to eavesdrop and report any dissident stirrings. Gone is the system that skewed college admissions and graduate appointments in favor of ruling Baath Party loyalists and away from rebellious minorities. Gone are the once-mandatory courses in national culture, which glorified Hussein's rule and related a self-serving version of Iraqi history. Gone, too, are the U.N. sanctions that for more than a decade prevented scholars from traveling abroad, and the censorship that barred students from exploring the Internet.
"We have real freedom now: freedom to compete with each other fairly, freedom to argue with our teachers and deans, freedom to talk without worrying if someone is listening," said Haider Lefte, 20, an engineering student.
"Some of the informers may still be among us," he said as his classmates laughed and pointed at each other. "But who will they inform to now?"
The looser postwar atmosphere has, however, brought physical insecurity. Although all entrances to the vast central university campus are guarded by U.S. troops, widespread rumors of robberies and kidnappings in the surrounding city have made parents nervous about letting their daughters travel alone to class.
Since courses resumed, many female day students have been driven to the university or accompanied on buses by relatives. At the teacher training school for women last week, the fathers and brothers of several dozen students lounged all morning in the parking lot, waiting for exams to finish.
"I pray all the time when I am out in public," said Raffale Hamid, 20, a biology major who used to ride the bus alone but whose father now delivers her to the faculty gate in his car. "Security is better inside the university with the American soldiers everywhere, but in streets we hear so many reports of stealing and kidnapping. Someone could kill us and no one would care."
Only one serious incident of violence has occurred inside the reopened campus, but it was particularly shocking. On July 6, an American soldier was killed by an unknown gunman as he stepped out of a student cafeteria. The incident stunned U.S. officials here, who had strongly backed reopening the university as an important psychological step toward normalizing Baghdad life.
Drew Erdmann, the senior U.S. adviser on Iraqi higher education, said the soldier was part of his security detail and that he helped carry the body out. The next day, though, he said he deliberately returned to campus for some meetings to reassure the academic community that U.S. support would not be easily deterred.
"The universities are an amazing success story, and whenever you have success, it can become a target for those who want to disrupt normal life," Erdmann said last week. "A couple of months ago, people weren't even sure classes would resume at all. Now they are functioning, students are graduating, women are on campus and the academic year will be completed." The school year ends next week.
Structurally, many university facilities in Baghdad are still a mess. A number of buildings were vandalized and some badly burned in an orgy of looting that followed the fall of Hussein's government in April. The entire library at the school of literature and languages was destroyed by fire, and the Ministry of Higher Education was bombed to ruins; most of the damage has not been fully repaired.
Some university officials said they have been disappointed by the slow pace of U.S. reconstruction aid and by the low university salaries authorized by U.S. administrators. Erdmann, in turn, said it has been difficult to get Iraqi institutions to produce systematic and precise lists of what they need.
But faculty members and administrators said that even though working conditions are far from ideal and salaries have been reduced, professional morale is greatly improved. One reason is that after years of top-down appointments, new interim deans and administrators have been chosen through open staff elections.
"It is sad to see the destruction, but our desires are very, very high," said Hatim Jabbar Attiya, an agronomy professor who was elected deputy university president -- and whose salary is now the same as his secretary's. "Before, there was a heavy weight on us, and people took jobs just to gain the benefits. Now people can make their own decisions, and they are here because they want to work."
Another obstacle to rebuilding the university is the intellectual time warp in which Iraqi academe was frozen for years, partly as a result of U.N. economic sanctions after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and partly as a result of restrictions on travel, scholarships and academic exchange by the Hussein government, which tightly controlled all passports and was fearful of foreign infiltration.
Barred from attending international conferences or receiving Western research journals, professors fell behind in their disciplines. Many gave up and fled Iraq, taking academic jobs in such countries as Australia and Yemen. Those who remained behind either became clock-punching educational apparatchiks or survived on scraps of smuggled outside knowledge.
"We couldn't order political science books from overseas, but friends used to bring in a few books and we would photocopy them," said Riyadh Aziz, the newly elected dean of the political science faculty.
"I have been teaching here for 32 years, and this is the first time we have ever had democratic elections," he said with a mixture of sadness and pride.
Aziz, who studied in Paris in the early 1970s, fondly recalled reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir during the heady days of French student ferment. Later, he said, he had a chance to teach abroad but declined because could not afford to take his family. Now he is making up for lost time, working with U.S. officials to develop a more liberal curriculum. "We want to teach human rights and public freedoms," he said. "The classes in national culture have been abolished."
University officials are hoping to attract foreign academic visitors and donations, and to reverse years of brain drain by luring back prominent exiled Iraqi scholars with competitive salary offers. Students, on the other hand, are clamoring to apply for foreign scholarships after years of being unable to study abroad.
In interviews, many students said they were worried about Iraq's future and uncertain about what would replace a system that virtually guaranteed a steady job to anyone who finished college and pledged loyalty to the government. Others complained about their lives off campus, and said they could not study at night because electricity is still extremely limited and that they do not feel safe going to cafes or clubs after dark.
"Our youth is gone. It ended with this war," said Aitan Bayati, 25, a sports education student. "We can't go out to have a picnic or coffee with our friends because we hear every day they are picking someone up and putting him in prison. We don't even have enough electricity to watch TV."
On campus, though, the new atmosphere of debate and tolerance is already transforming Baghdad University into an oasis. Last week, students from various ethnic and religious groups -- once pitted against each other by Hussein -- chatted easily between exams. Some engaged in vigorous political arguments that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago.
During one exam break, a group of political science students volunteered opinions that ranged from passionately pro-Hussein and anti-American to the extreme opposite. Shiite students shared once-banned CDs of religious sermons. Kurdish students, whose minority group was severely repressed by Hussein, said they felt safe and comfortable on campus for the first time.
"There is a huge difference now, like between the earth and the sky," said Yaser Abdul Majid, 20, a chemistry student, as his classmates issued a chorus of complaints about the U.S. occupation, the crime problem and the dire lack of water and power in the capital. "The difference is that now, none of us will be killed for expressing our opinion."
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