American Universities Abroad , livre ebook

Copyright 2017 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 977 416 840 6
eISBN 978 1 61797 846 3
Version 1
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Understanding American and Liberal Arts Universities Around the World
Ted Purinton and Jennifer Skaggs

1. Achieving Liberal Arts Education Transnationally: Where From, How, and Where To?
Richard A. Detweiler
2. “. . . To Save Us All”: Lessons from the American University in Cairo, a Community of Learning in Revolutionary Times
Lisa Anderson
3. AUN as a Development University—Preparing Nigerian Students for the Challenges of the Country
Margee Ensign
4. Identity and Mission in a Pluralistic Nation: The American University of Beirut
Peter Dorman
5. Study Abroad, Abroad: Leading the Global Liberal Arts in Paris
Celeste Schenck and Scott Sprenger
6. American University of Sharjah: A Young Institution Aiming to Become a Research University
Björn Kjerfve
7. BISLA and ECOLAS: Hubs of the Liberal Arts in Europe
Samuel Abrahám
8. Should Higher Education Be Vocationalized? The Role of Liberal Arts Education in Hong Kong
Ka Ho Mok
9. Trends in Liberal Arts Education in Japan
Junko Hibiya
10. From Hardship to Success: Building the Lebanese American University
Joseph G. Jabbra
11. Achieving Diversity and Excellence without the US Infrastructure
Mary Merva
12. Experiential Learning, Cheese, and Chocolate: Connecting Curriculum and Place
Sara Steinert Borella
13. Greek Lessons: The American College of Greece in the Greek Economic Crisis
David G. Horner
14. Greece’s Constitutional Provision on Private Higher Education and ACG’s Open University Affiliation
Thimios Zaharopoulos
15. Forman Christian College: The Rebirth of a Liberal Arts University in an Islamic State
James Tebbe and Joseph Jones
16. Adapting the Liberal Arts Model to Create Ethical and Entrepreneurial Leaders for Africa: The Case of Ashesi University College, Ghana
Marcia A. Grant
17. IQRA “READ”: Making the Case for Effat Liberal Arts Education
Haifa Reda Jamal Al-Lail
18. Merging Local Customs with the Liberal Arts in Central Asia
Andrew Wachtel
19. Adapting Liberal Arts and Sciences as a System of Education
Jonathan Becker and Susan H. Gillespie
20. America and American Universities Abroad: Toward a Public Diplomacy Research Agenda
Kyle A. Long
21. New Perspectives on Legitimacy for American and Liberal Education: From Marginalization to Disruptive Innovation?
Kara A. Godwin
Preface
I n the summer of 2016, we were getting ready for the new semester at the American University in Cairo (AUC) to start and completing the manuscript for this volume. AUC had just welcomed its twelfth and newest president, Ambassador Francis Ricciardone. Among his first tasks was to listen to student complaints about a recent tuition increase that compounded financial difficulties for families in a country experiencing a foreign exchange crisis. Many on the campus felt sympathetic to all the challenges he would face in his first days and weeks on the job. While the particular troubles in any country would ordinarily be enough to keep a new president busy, the massive shifts global higher education is undergoing on a daily basis compound these situations. Students are becoming more sophisticated in their expectations of their universities; faculty are increasingly being asked to solve some of the most difficult social and technical problems in society; and employers are demanding better-prepared graduates. Indeed, the job of a university president has become more intense and precarious.
Yet on August 24, 2016, just as the final touches to this volume were being made, we were alerted to news from Kabul: The American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) had been attacked by militants. The siege began during evening classes and lasted until the next morning. Fifteen people were killed and dozens were injured. This came only a month after two of their international faculty members had been kidnapped.
Undoubtedly AUC’s president will have his hands full with very serious issues in overseeing a unique university—a learning institution that bridges two increasingly distant cultures, the United States and Egypt. And the same will be true for all the other presidents of independent, transnational, American-style or liberal arts universities around the globe. Maintaining fidelity to a unique, rigorous, broad, and distinctly creative and analytic curriculum poses challenges difficult to comprehend.
But their jobs now pale in comparison to the task the leadership of AUAF will have in the years ahead: they must regain a sense of security on the campus while also fulfilling the university’s educational mission. This is not a task that will be done in a vacuum, as leaders in other American international universities have handled similar responsibilities of reassuring a campus community in the wake of deadly or traumatic experiences. Calvin Plimpton took the helm at the American University of Beirut (AUB) within the same year President Malcolm Kerr was killed outside his campus office. Margee Ensign, president of the American University in Nigeria (AUN) until 2017, worked tirelessly to engage her university community in support of refugees facing distressing terrorist threats in northern Nigeria. Lisa Anderson, previous president of the American University in Cairo, fought to keep the campus open following the Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre in Cairo in 2013, and prior to that, just weeks after taking office, fought to reopen the campus following the January 25th Revolution in 2011. Celeste Schenck, the current president of the American University in Paris, struggled to regain confidence of American families who sent their students for a semester abroad in Paris at a time when terrorist attacks seemingly became a staple of French existence. Though not at a branded American university, President Leonard Chang of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, a liberal arts university, worked to maintain open dialogue and freedom of speech during the potentially explosive 2014 Umbrella Revolution.
Such reminders are not intended to portray globally located American or liberal arts universities as constantly managing security concerns. And indeed, these reminders do not discount the challenges university presidents within the United States currently encounter: potential mass shootings, pervasive sexual harassment, and so much more. All of these challenges demand a quality of leadership never expected in previous decades.
Yet, to recognize the threats leaders of American and liberal arts universities operating abroad undergo is to know the daily struggles inherent in the acts of bridging academic cultures and communicating complex intellectual ideas within naturally delicate and transcendental institutions. While most of these universities are widely perceived to be the best in their respective host countries, some of them are also perceived as colonialist operations supporting American foreign policy. Others are considered too liberal or too risky for existing host governments. Nevertheless, these academic institutions follow a historical model of higher education that, at its fundamental core, rejects blind adherence to authority. Consequently, they have evolved into universities that blend the best elements of higher education in the United States with the most critical and important aspects of host culture and tradition:
The missionaries who founded AUC and AUB did not, as many other missionaries of the time did, seek to convert people to Christianity; instead, they desired to show their values through the institutions they created. They believed that without a robust education, people would not be able to think for themselves and realize the prospects of self-governance. The exportation of the liberal arts model today purports the very same thing. And thus, it is through a university like AUC that Egyptians can see what the US is and aspires to be. Conversely, it is an institution through which Americans can better understand Egypt. The American model of higher education, as the critics in the US contend, is not dying; it is alive, growing, and spreading. And it is, and has proven over time, to be a force for good in the world. (Purinton 2015, 82)
The pages ahead portray the courageous leadership of presidents, provosts, deans, and others who model the very best of intercultural, transnational academia. Whether at universities adhering to the historical principles of the liberal arts, or those branded as American, these leaders can teach us how to walk the fine lines of fidelity and accommodation. And as a result, they provide insight into the exceptional place our institutions hold in the global realm of higher education.
Though it is little comfort to the faculty, students, families, alumni, and staff in Kabul, the targeting of AUAF by extremists is a clear indication of the effectiveness of its role in Afghan culture, economics, politics, and science. Whereas many of the higher education institutions operating alongside these universities in their respective host countries offer a narrow curriculum, American and liberal arts universities are shaped as institutions deliberately promoting fr