Part of the observed interest in all things American in the Arab World today is the relatively recent phenomenon of the treatment of the American academic world in Arabic literary texts. Musings and reminiscences about the American academic setting have always formed part of memoirs by authors who lived or studied in the United States at one point of their life. This can be seen most recently in the autobiographies of some major Arab writers like Abdul Wahhab al-Mesiri in "My Intellectual Journey in Seeds, Roots, and Fruits" (2001) and Jalal Amin in "What Life Has Taught Me" (2007), both dedicating whole chapters to the discussion of "their" American experience. Others chose to write about their experience in well-circulated Arabic journals such as the piece "My Journey to America" by Dr. Jaber Asfour in al-Arabi magazine (2006). Still, the more intriguing portrayal is to be found in the fictionalized rendering of the American academy by some leading Arab novelists. Among the most prominent are two best-selling authors who chose the American university as the setting for their stories and conflicts: Sun'allah Ibrahim in his "Amrikanli (a la American Way)" (2004) and Alaa al-Aswany in "Chicago." This paper examines the portrayal of the American academic locus in recent Arabic literature, comparing those texts that approach the American university as an experiential lived-in reality with those that provide a fictionalized envisioning of the world of the "learned other." It hypothesizes that the choosing of the American academic world as a fictional setting is not merely occasioned by the authors' familiarity with the setting as much as a desire to explore what many Arab intellectuals regard as the institution standardizing/legitimizing Western political and cultural ethos with which they find themselves locked in an enchantingly adversarial inexorable relationship. The paper seeks to shed some light on this rather recent phenomenon in Arabic letters by studying its literary, historical, and political contexts and the main causes behind its rise, pointing out the cultural and civilizational outlooks and perceptions that underlie the texts' images, motifs, and patterns.

The last few years have seen an influx of foreign institutes of higher education to the Middle East region. For example, recently Japan and Germany started universities in Egypt. Several American and British universities have established "off compass locations" in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The Qatar Foundation has partnered with six American universities to establish branch campuses in Doha; the list includes Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and Carnegie Mellon University. New York University is set to open a comprehensive liberal arts branch campus in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in the fall of 2010. The London School of Economics, the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and the University of Wollongong, of Australia, along with several other American universities, like Michigan State University and the Rochester Institute of Technology, have already established satellite campuses in Dubai in partnership with private and government investors. Foreign institutes in the Middle East are not new. The American University of Beirut was founded in 1866 while the American University in Cairo was established in 1919. The mission statements of both universities include reference to providing excellence in education, commitment to research and serving the people of the Middle East. Although it is true that the teaching standards and academic facilities in terms of classrooms, libraries, and laboratories are much better at these institutions compared to their comparable national universities, yet there have been some drawbacks especially in the countries hosting these institutions affecting their societal, cultural, economic, and ultimately political well-being. Some questions to explore: Do these universities have a "brain drain" effect on national universities? Does their use of English as a medium of instruction marginalize Arabic? Do they create a culturally alienated elite? What about their close ties to multinational corporation? And finally, what is their record in their professed research goals? This paper will look closely into the benefits hosting societies gain as well as the price that these societies pay for allowing such an educational model in their homeland.

From kindergarten to university, in private institutes and government schools, Syrians go to great lengths to acquire English language skills. The rise in private companies offering lucrative salaries - the result of a decade of gradual economic liberalization - coupled with public interest in engaging with the global community means that most Syrians view English fluency as the most important pathway to professional success, financial security and social prestige. American schools and universities stand at the top of the Syrian hierarchy of educational institutions offering English language instruction. The wealthiest families have long sent their children abroad to the region's American accredited universities like American University of Beirut (AUB) or directly to the US itself. For years, Damascus Community School (DCS), owned by the US embassy, educated not just foreigners but the children of the upper class. More recently, accelerated by new laws permitting private schools to teach in English, "American-style" schools are the rage among elites and the upper middle class who spend upwards of $10,000 US per year per student. Typically, these schools have no direct connection to American educational institutions, or American accreditation nor do they use specifically American materials, but their use of English as the medium of instruction and focus on problem-solving rather than rote memorization is sufficient for them to share in the cachet of accredited American schools. Despite laws enabling such schools to flourish, there is official ambivalence about how American Syrian education should become. In November of 2009, the government closed DCS after 70 years of unfettered operation. Rumors often circulate that private schools will be shuttered or forced to teach in Arabic. Despite what future actions the regime takes regarding such institutions, their desirability and social importance likely will not wane anytime soon. This presentation - based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork - will examine how these schools imbue the students and their families with the prestige of an American education without leaving Syria. After students graduate from such schools, they are poised to mingle in the upper echelons of Syrian society where they find a like-minded commitment to regularly using English, entrepreneurship, volunteerism and cosmopolitanism. They find common ground with graduates of accredited American institutions, Syrians who studied in America or Europe and help to shape a visible, new trend-setting elite sector Syrian society.

The proposed study addresses the inter-subjective identity of the American academic institutions in the Arab World, especially the American University in Cairo and the American University of Beirut, and how it was negotiated among various players with various, sometimes harmonic, sometimes contrapuntal, and sometimes dissonant, intentions and stances, and how the identity was/is transformed through a socialization process (making use of constructivist and post-structuralist theories). To address this question, this study would make use of the literature on the missionary/colonial initial mission for these institutions and how it took various forms throughout the course of its history. Also it would make use of secondary literature on activism in American universities, including the most recent Campus at War. Nevertheless, this literature is to be complimented with a first hand study of the student publications and activist experiences, including my own. This inquiry also addresses, on the other side of the spectrum, the various 'gating' techniques in both universities, including the recent 'migration' of AUC campus from the center of the city to the peripheral desert, and what this gating means with regards to student activism, surveillance and control techniques, and the projected identity of the two institutions. In the above mentioned effort, this study attempts to study the linkages and/or tensions between various visions and perceptions for the roles and identities of the American universities in the area, and how the academic and physical settings, the form of education, and the student activism negotiate these roles, form or resolve tensions, and achieve linkages or disjunctions with one another.

Educational cooperation and support between the U.S. and several Arab countries has existed for decades in the form of accreditation of Arab universities by U.S. boards and student and faculty exchanges. In recent years, a new form of transnational education has become popular: the branch campus. Some have championed these university franchises as a means to promote better understanding between the two civilizations and to encourage more open societies on the Arab side. This paper seeks to evaluate this claim along several axes: the relation of transnational education to the politics of trade liberalization in the region, the proliferation of technical degree programs versus liberal arts degree programs, the potential of transforming educational consumers to producers on the international market and a comparison of two competing institutional models, the university branch campus (UBC) and the foreign-backed university (FBU). The paper seeks to accomplish this by giving a broad overview of current debates in transnational education as well as a summary of the situation in the Arab region. It will focus on the case of Jordan, which hosts one American branch campus (a technical school) and one American FBU (a film school). The Arab world presents an interesting case study for transnational education issues because it is one region where ventures in the field are perceived as being tools of American cultural diplomacy. Jordan presents a unique case study for the region because it operates as an importer and exporter of educational institutions and consciously directs some of its initiatives for clear foreign policy aims, as evidenced by the role of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) in several such projects. In measuring the effectiveness and nature of Jordan's imported programs, i.e. in terms of their stated goals and graduate expectations, this paper attempts to assess their role in Jordan's economy and society. In analyzing Jordan's export projects, the paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of American institutional support in promoting self-sufficiency and regional cooperation in education.