Is it time to leave KU?

It takes another stupid act from KU to prompt me to return to blogging.
So here’s the story:
Last week I saw these fliers in Kaifan. I resisted the urge to voice my increasing dissatisfaction with the KU administration.

Two days later, I read this newspaper article that made me think things aren’t too bad yet. At least the administration will not support such offensive propaganda:

الجامعة تتجه لإحالة اتحاد الطلبة إلى التحقيق

But then again, over the long weekend, and with the beginning of the new year, the university disappoints me again with this:

الجامعة تتراجع: الاتحاد وزَّع نشرة الحجاب خارج الكليات

Now tell me, is it time to leave KU?

Kuwait University: Yesterday & Today

These slides run when you open the site for Kuwait University. I find them inspiring What do my readers think? (Assuming I still have readers here after neglecting my blog for a long time now)

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Airborne Reflections on Keats & Dench

A fourteen hour flight to D.C. I Slept for 8 hours, probably enabled by what the pharmacist at Boots suggested as sleep aid, but what I later researched to find as antidepressant. I might say the pharmacist was more informed than google. The drug helped me sleep for 8 hours, assisted no doubt by my business class seat, a last minute upgrade well worth the money spent. As an anti-depressant, however, it didn’t help at all. I woke up as depressed as I was before going to sleep. 

But back to my flight. After 8 hours of only slightly interrupted sleep, I watched in-flight entertainment, Bright Star, about John Keats’s affair with Fanny Brawne ending with his death with TB. I’m always taken by films on artists, the Romantics being a special old favorite of mine. And this one was well-made. Keats says poetry, if it doesn’t arrive as naturally as a tree then it’s not worth pursuing. I live in Kuwait where most of our trees don’t come out naturally, so maybe our poets are exempt from that rule. I’ll have to keep that in mind as I re-read Buthaina Al-Esa and Mais Al-Othman in preparation for my conference paper – still to be written.

I follow this with Notes of a Scandal on my newly acquired best friend iPod Touch – such a cool toy. Judi Dench is indeed brilliant as a black widow. I am now ranking her almost next to Meryl Streep, probably partly because I saw Streep perform live at Central Park and I am now possessed by her. The movie is a work of art, both brilliant in plot and captivating in cinematography. How do they do it? Bench is a vindictive lover. Women’s jealousy, especially when linked to loving another woman, is a most destructive weapon. 

KU renovating

They’re doing it again. Floor work. Renovating the exterior.
Meanwhile our classrooms are missing projector screens, computers, curtains, and sometimes even teachers.
Meanwhile our book orders are delayed because they have to bargain for cheaper prices.
Meanwhile we, in a department of 42 instructors, only have 2 TA’s, because the university is short on budget.
And meanwhile, inviting guest speakers is difficult because we don’t offer them enough financial incentive.

But it’s all in the tiles. Tiles are our way for a better education.

Thank you NICBM for making our university a better place.

واجامعتاه – University Blues

This picture is taken from the net, not one of my own students. But the sentiment expressed speaks volumes.

When I started teaching at KU in 2000 I was furious at all these accusations I hear from my colleagues about the inadequacy of our students, their reluctance to even read, their inability to function as students. I saw these as false accusations as I was always blessed by students who impress me, not only in their academic performance, but also in their willingness to take part in activities outside of the classroom, and in their honest desire to be good citizens.

What happened between 2000 and 2010? Up to a year or two ago, I would still see cases of promising students, ones who hungrily wait for my announcement of starting a book club, ones who attend some of the cultural functions I occasionally announce here, and ones who start their own projects (or at least try) outside of the university.

I am now correcting students’ papers and drafts. Call it frustration at the deteriorating level I am noticing, but for once in my life, I consider my job pointless. What can one semester or two do to fix damage that has taken place over an average of twelve years?

Is it time to quit my job?

* Alqabas’s concern with the freedom of press, at this moment, sounds rather trivial to me. Freedom of press demands free thinkers, capable thinkers. I rarely see any of those any more. Freedom to [ex]press what?

** Maybe this post is just reflective of me. Maybe I’m just only seeing black now for personal reasons. Or maybe it really is time to blow up our educational system.

Film Week @ KU

The Department of English Language & Literature Presents
Film Week
East to West:
The Immigrant Experience

13-17 December 2009, 7 pm
Ceremonial Hall
(across from Al-Ahli Bank)
Khaldiya Campus, Kuwait University

13 Dec 2009
Man Push Cart
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Pakistan/USA, 2005, 87 minutes
English and Urdu with English subtitles

14 Dec 2009
Brothers and Others
Directed by Nicolas Rossier
Documentary
USA, 2004, 54 minutes
English

15 Dec 2009
Inch-Allah Dimanche
Directed by Yamina Benguigui
Algeria/France, 2001, 98 minutes
French and Arabic with English subtitles

16 Dec 2009
Breaking Bread
Directed by Hamid Rahmanian
Documentary
Korea/USA, 2000, 54 minutes
English and Korean with English subtitles

Sir Alfred of Charles de Gaulle Airport
Directed by Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard
Docmentary
Iran/USA, 2001, 29 minutes
English, French, and Farsi with English subtitles

17 Dec 2009
The Namesake
Directed by Mira Nair
India/USA, 2006, 122 minutes
English, French, Hindi, and Bengali with English subtitles

*free admission

update: click below to access brochure (includes synopsis of movies)
Film Week 2009

The Trouble with Islam Today by Irshad Manji

A very bold book. Manji is funny, but I doubt if her sense of humor would be tolerated by most Muslims who read her book. Tough love. That’s what she calls it. Muslims (or Islam today) needs someone to shake them/it into waking up to the reality of today. She argues that Islam is in big trouble – basically stemming from her own inability to fully accept what she has been taught in school regarding a faith that deprives her from the right to ask questions. And it is our job as Muslims to rescue Islam.

“By writing this open letter,” Manji begins her book, “I’m not implying that other religions are problem-free. Hardly. The difference is, libraries abound in books about the trouble with Christianity. There’s no shortage of books about the trouble with Judaism. We Muslims have a lot of catching up to do in the dissent department. Whose permission are we waiting for?” (4)

She then talks about attending Saturday classes for Muslims in Toronto where “wherever classes congregated within the side expanse of that room, a partition would tag along. Worse was the partition between mind and soul. In my Saturday classes I learned that if you’re spiritual, you don’t think. If you think, you’re not spiritual.” (11)

Her biggest problem, it seems, is that Islam, or modern practices of Islam, not only lack any tolerance for other religions, but lack tolerance for any interpretations of the Quran that go against the general agreement reached years ago, and against the laws decreed by a few clergy who all belong to only a small portion of the Muslim world today.

In her books she calls for a reform of Islam, but she is not shy to argue that such reform can take on any issue, including issues of whether or not the Quran, as we have it today, is perfect (citing examples of its deliverance to the Prophet and the final accumulation of it under hasty circumstances).

To the Arab reader, her attack on modern Islam might not be the worst. She almost directly praises the Israeli government and people for their ability to create a country, though based on religion, but one that is more open for freedom of thought and interpretation, an open-mindedness that she sees to be the cause of the major problem with Islam today.

But as she says in the first few pages: “Is that a heart attack you’re having? Make it fast.” (2)