Lecturer’s Arrest in the Emirates Stirs Debate Over Academic Freedom in the Middle East - Global - The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/Lecturers-Arrest-in-the/127190
The recent detention of a Sorbonne lecturer in the United Arab Emirates has rekindled the debate over the nature of academic freedom at Western institutions in the Persian Gulf region and the political impact those institutions, especially the high-profile new campus of New York University in Abu Dhabi, will have.
The arrest of Nasser bin Ghaith, a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi branch of the University of Paris IV (Paris-Sorbonne) who has participated in the Doha Debates, a respected regional political forum, leaves observers asking what freedoms the academics working at new Western branch campuses in the emirates will enjoy. “Are professors only protected in the 90 minutes when they are giving seminars, and after that they are fair game?” asks Samer Muscati, a researcher on the United Arab Emirates for Human Rights Watch.
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The Sorbonne’s Web sites are silent about the arrest, and e-mail messages from The Chronicle to communication offices at the Paris and the Abu Dhabi campuses of the Sorbonne were not answered.
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