Iraq’s Scholars Reluctant to Return

The continuing shortage of academics is damaging higher education throughout the country.

Zaineb Naji in Baghdad (ICR No. 243, 18-Jan-08)

...Widespread threats against Iraqi university staff have all but stripped the country of its intellectual core, particularly in Baghdad. According to the country’s higher education ministry, 240 lecturers were killed from 2003 to October 2007. Approximately 2,000 academics have fled the country, according to Tariq al-Bakaa, a former minister of higher education who served under the 2004 government of the then prime minister Ayad Allawi (...) Al-Bakaa, now a visiting scholar from Harvard University, is researching the state of Iraq’s educational system and threats against academics. "You won’t return to a country where you will be killed," said al-Bakaa, who left for the United States in October 2005 through the US-based Scholars at Risk Network. According to one of al-Bakaa’s reports, approximately 60 per cent of the murdered academics held PhDs, came from Baghdad and taught at universities. No one has been tried in any of these murder cases, he said... continua / continued