Iraq Minister of Higher Education Sami al-Mudhaffar has a good idea of what the nation's top schools need, a world-class curriculum and a vigorous student revolt. Later this year, Mudhaffar plans to host an international conference with academics not afraid to visit the war-torn country, and he hopes to lure Iraqi scientists and professors back to rebuild a system that once drew students from across the Middle East. "We need them very badly," he acknowledged, and with them Iraq needs the contacts and expertise that the expatriated physicists, engineers and doctors all over the world now have.
"I need 1,000-2,000 (academics), it depends on the situation and how well we organise ourselves.
"I want our departments to be on a par with those in Europe and the United States," he said.
"Second-year chemistry should be as good as what the University of California or the University of London are giving their students."
Iraqi universities function, but widespread chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 left most in shambles, and subsequent violence has killed scores of professors.
Their salaries will double next month as authorities seek to plug a brain drain, but "libraries here are empty," a program director at the USAID agency told AFP last week.
Of 144 schools of higher education across the country, only 21 escaped lootings, bombings, and arson that followed Saddam's fall, he said.
The ministry itself was sacked, and is now in a slightly threadbare complex that was once a computer institute in central Baghdad.
Countries that joined the US-led military coalition in Iraq have helped with post-war reconstruction however, and Mudhaffar cited two in particular.
"We have had some success, especially at the University of Thi-Qar with the Italians for example.
"The Japanese are also working very hard but in a place where there is no university, in Samawa. They are working very well," building secondary schools.
And the French, who did not join the coalition, were also welcome in Iraq.
"Working with the French government and people has a special flavour," the minister said, because they "are always thinking of their independence".
"That makes the Iraqi people want to do as the French do."
In addition, "they have great experience in contemporary fields, especially molecular biology and genetic therapies."
On the delicate subject of reforms, Mudhaffar focused on science but said all areas needed "scientific reform".
"We have to change the curriculum in physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine and other related subjects," and the changes must be long term.
"Otherwise we are just convincing ourselves that we have carried out reforms and convincing society because we have gotten rid of the philosophy of the Baath party regime" that Saddam set up.
"If somebody gets the Nobel prize in philosophy, we have to know what they have done and integrate it into the syllabus."
And while state-of-the art lab equipment is needed, the US-trained bio-chemist turned minister emphasised experimentation.
"Good experiments, not just instruments to show to people but the proper experiments too. That is what I am looking for in the future."
Finally, the nation's top educator said students needed a robust revolt of their own, once widespread violence now rocking the country had eased.
"I really want our students to have what are called the student revolts of the sixties," he stressed.
"It would mean that they have changed a lot, that they are working scientifically, that they are thinking very clearly, it would mean that they know what politics are, that they are concerned about their curriculum."
"Those are the lessons I have learned from the (1968) student revolts in France."
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