Student Union
American University Hopes to Fill Higher-Ed Gap in Iraq
From afar, the sprawling complex of the newly inaugurated American University in Baghdad appears like a floating mirage.
Encircled by blue waters of a human-made lake, former Saddam Hussein-era palaces have been converted to university departments promising a U.S.-style education to meet the needs of Iraq's growing youth.
Higher education has lagged in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam. Government officials maintain that the American University in Baghdad, which opened this week, is critical to shoring up the country's flailing state of higher education.
The campus is a sight rarely seen in Baghdad's urban sprawl: Ducks float by peacefully, as a handful of students, backpacks slung over their shoulders, head to class. Glossy new buses take others across a winding road.
"I feel more like a mayor of a big city than a university president," AUIB President Michael Mulnix said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, a day after the university officially opened its doors.
Critics have raised alarm over the university's funding scheme, which is reliant on one influential Iraqi businessman, while the twin threats of coronavirus and attacks by armed groups threaten to add further delays.
Still, university administrators are forging ahead with plans to expand.
Of the 14 colleges that Mulnix hopes will one day be brimming with avid learners, just three opened this week: Arts and Sciences, Business and International Studies. Five more, including Health Sciences and Law, are planned for the fall.
Also in the works are plans for an international school offering kindergarten through Grade 12, a teaching hospital, even a movie theater. A deal with U.S. fast-food chain Hardee's is close to being inked. Starbucks could be next.
As president, Mulnix's long list of duties befits the ambitious scope of the university, from overseeing mammoth reconstruction efforts of Saddam-era palaces three years ago, to hiring staff, managing food services and paying utility bills.
The university is located on the site where Saddam commissioned the construction of a resort. The project included the grand al-Fao Palace and numerous villas and smaller palaces in the 1990s to mark Iraq's retaking of the al-Fao peninsula during the Iran-Iraq conflict. A lake was formed by diverting water from the Tigris River and filled with a special breed of fish dubbed "Saddam bass."
The initials of the deposed dictator are still etched on the walls, columns and ceilings. Following his capture by U.S forces, he was imprisoned in one of the palace buildings. It was later used as a headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition force and called Camp Victory.
"His presence is here, everywhere," said Mulnix. "It's kind of interesting to take that legacy and transform it into what we are doing."
The dream, he said, was to bring an American-style university with a core liberal arts program to Baghdad. It is not just his vision, but that of the university's chief Iraqi financier, influential businessman Saadi Saihood, whose holdings began with a laundromat in the Green Zone servicing U.S. forces after 2003.
For now, the university is "American" in name only. It will be years before it might be accredited in the United States. They must first produce an initial graduating class, Mulnix said.
So far, the Saihood family has spent $200 million to renovate and refurbish the campus, prompting criticism of too much reliance on the personal wealth of a single businessman.
Mulnix brushed off allegations launched by critics of the university, including some Iraqi and other higher-education officials, that the family was seeking to make money.
"This is 100% a non-for-profit university. All the money made via tuition goes back to the university, not to repay the family that started it."
AUIB is the first American-style university in federal Iraq. Two American-style universities are located in Dohuk and Sulimaniyah in the northern Kurdish-run region.
An American approach to education, which encourages a diverse curriculum, will take time to gain popularity in Baghdad, where high school exam scores determine career paths, and degrees in engineering and medical sciences are favored. Liberal arts is a novel concept in Iraq, Mulnix said.
That might explain why enrollment has not met expectations.
Fewer than 300 students were admitted to AUIB in its inaugural year this year, far short of the 10,000-30,000 its founders hoped for. The majority went directly to the school's English Language Academy to improve their English skills before embarking on a baccalaureate program.
Most of the students have very basic English skills, not enough to meet the rigorous demands of the university, Mulnix said.
"We are having to take over from the very beginning. ... The students coming here really have quite the job because it will take a year or a year and a half for some of them when they are starting at a basic level to get through the English program."
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US campuses are battlegrounds in free speech debate
This week the University of Southern California canceled the graduation speech of its senior class valedictorian at a time when there is a growing debate over the limits of free speech on American college campuses.
USC’s Asna Tabassum, a Muslim biomedical engineer major, was selected from among 100 outstanding students to address the graduating class of 2024 this May. However, the school withdrew the invitation for her to speak at the graduation ceremony citing safety concerns.
Tabassum denounced the decision, which she attributed to her public support for Palestinian human rights. She said it is part of “a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice.”
The school maintains it is a safety issue, not about free speech. School officials say they received an alarming number of violent threats after selecting her as speaker.
USC is one of many American universities that have struggled with policies over free speech and campus protest since October’s Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the continuing fighting in Gaza. After weeks or months of on-campus protests and rallies, schools have been taking more forceful action to punish protesters who administrators say have become disruptive.
On Thursday at Columbia University in New York, police arrested more than 100 students who had gathered on campus for pro-Palestinian protests. The school’s dean wrote that the protesters had been told several times that they were violating university policies and would be suspended. The students say they were exercising their free speech rights.
At Washington’s American University, protests in all campus buildings have been banned by the school’s president since January. Under the new policy, students may not hold rallies, engage in silent protests or place posters in any campus building.
Protests and safety
University students have a long history of engaging in political activism. From the Vietnam War to abortion rights, universities have played a key role in American political debates.
However, students now say that schools like AU with a long-standing protest culture are silencing protesters with new rules.
Arusa Islam, American University student body president-elect and current vice president, says the policies are preventing an open discussion about U.S. foreign policy.
“Indoor protesting was never a problem, it was never an issue before October 7th,” Islam said. “Students were allowed to put up posters in buildings and students were allowed to have a silent protest.”
“And now we don’t have that right anymore,” she added. “We have been silenced and it is affecting us greatly.”
American University’s president, Sylvia Burwell, says the school’s new policies are intended to ensure that protests do not disrupt university activity.
Burwell also referred to recent events on campus that “made Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” She added, antisemitism is abhorrent, wrong, and will not be tolerated at American University.
While administrators insist that they are making narrow restrictions in the interests of providing an education, critics say the policies have a far-reaching effect.
At Cornell University, where new rules took effect in January, Claire Ting, the executive vice president of the Cornell Student Assembly, said the policies have had an unsettling effect on campus.
“The campus climate at Cornell has been tense surrounding free speech in recent times,” Ting emailed VOA.
Ting said that both students and faculty feel the policy has had chilling effects on free expression.
“Students report facing arbitrary, escalating punishment for violating the policy, with the policy itself lacking clear outlines for the consequences of civil disobedience,” she added.
In its new policy Cornell warns students that disciplinary action may be taken if protests impede people or traffic, damage school property or interfere with the school’s operations in any way.
In its campus-wide notice explaining the new guidelines, the school wrote that the new policy would ensure that expressive activity is allowed but must remain nonviolent.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, also known as FIRE, has tracked free speech issues on American campuses.
FIRE and College Pulse have produced an annual survey, since 2022, ranking colleges based on their policies and what students say about the free speech climate on campus.
This year the group reported that “alarming” numbers of students say they self-censor or “find their administrations unclear” on free speech issues.
“College campuses have always been places where students have been unafraid to express themselves and with the recent Gaza conflict after the 10/7 attacks, it’s been very heated on both sides of this issue,” said Zach Greenberg, the senior program officer of FIRE.
Harvard ranked last in this year’s survey. FIRE said the school punished some professors and researchers over what they had said or written, and students reported a poor climate for free speech on campus.
The controversy came to Congress late last year, when Harvard’s president testified over complaints of widespread antisemitism.
“I don’t think you’d find many students on campus right now that would say we are the model for flourishing free speech and ideas exchange in the country,” said J. Sellers Hill, president of Harvard’s school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.
“But I think you’ve really seen that be acknowledged by administrators and it seems to be something they are dedicated to taking on.”
As the head of The Harvard Crimson, Hill manages the paper’s 350 editors and 90 reporters, who’ve covered, in detail, the ongoing free speech/protests controversy and the resignation of former President Claudine Gay following her testimony to Congress.
“I think no one would dispute Harvard has work to do and progress to make,” Hill said. “I think it’s a tough sell, for me, that Harvard is uniquely in its own league in terms of intolerance of speech. That doesn’t square with what I have seen on our college campus or on other college campuses around the country. I think Harvard is held to a higher standard.”
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