Dubai International Academic City plans to create an education hub for the entire Middle East and North Africa region with nearly 40 universities catering for 40,000 students.
Meanwhile, sttudents looking to join NYU’s new Abu Dhabi site will have to meet the same requirements as those at its home campus in Washington Square, New York.
The Centre for Social Cohesion released a report on the views of Muslim students on British university campuses (pdf).
I’ll confess to skimming the report, looking at a few (predictable) headlines (1, 2, 3) and comments and then forgetting about it — I just don’t consider CSC a credible outfit (Douglas Murray is an odious prick).
Having read it a little more closely, I can see my instincts were right. The report, while looking into a very useful and important topic, was ultimately garbage and misreported by various newspapers.
And Richard Dawkins claims people can’t say what you want about Muslims in the UK!
Academic freedom in Britain: This is the state of academic freedom in contemporary Britain:
The article is raises a glaring contradiction between the police account in a letter to Sabir and the reported views of Sabir’s lecturers. The police claim in a letter to Sabir that (my emphasis):
“The university authorities have now made clear that possession of this material is not required for the purpose of your course of study nor do they consider it legitimate for you to possess it for research purposes.”
Yet the article says (again my emphasis):
Mr Sabir’s personal tutor Bettina Renz, a lecturer in international security, and his MA supervisor, Rod Thornton, a terrorism specialist and former soldier, have both said they told police that Mr Sabir’s possession of the document was legitimate given his research interests.
So, which is it?
A commentator at the Times Higher Education website notes that the other man arrested (but also never charged) alongside Sabir, Hischam Yezza, has received no help from the university despite studying and working there for over a decade.
One question not addressed by the article is whether Rizwaan Sabir would have been arrested had he been called, say, ‘Roger Simpson’. I honestly hope this is not interpreted as an attempt to keep Muslims away from pursuing degrees in similar fields (terrorism, international security, war and peace studies, etc).
Concern over Saudi funding of Islamic studies in British universities.
Abu Dhabi gives $50m to NYU.
Would you like your own blog hosted at Talk Islam? Email the admin at "salaam at talk islam dot info" !
Talk Islam uses Wordpress MU and the Prologue theme by Automattic
DISCLAIMER: Please see the About Talk Islam page for fair use issues and our privacy policy.