When Teenagers Run the Universities

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

There are presidents of Palestinian universities, whether in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, some of them elderly, supposedly people of experience and learning, distinguished personalities capable of running universities according to professional and academic standards, and according to the requirements of a society aiming to advance and undergo qualitative social transformation.

They are not teenagers in age, but they are teenagers from the angle of their acceptance of servitude and their love of humiliating people, especially those with advanced academic qualifications. But it is important to note that the position of university president in Palestine is primarily a political position, not a national one — or rather, it is a factional position, not a Palestinian one. That is, every dominant faction searches for a university president according to a ruler or preset standards suited to the faction’s interest, not the interest of the homeland and the people. Birzeit University constitutes an exception, and the standards of democratic selection apply to it more than to any other institution in the territory occupied in 1967.

In any case, most of those installed as university presidents do not actually run the universities — the actual managers are factional students who barely understand anything about administration and proper academic procedure, or the actual manager may be from outside the university walls but is a faction member belonging to the faction controlling the university, directing student leaderships remotely.

From experience, the dominant faction, whether in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, forms the backing of the university president — it is what protects him and provides him support in his various activities and measures, but on the condition of commitment to whatever measures the faction wants. The faction, for example, is interested in monopolizing study scholarships, and the university president must develop various tactics to bypass the deserving and grant scholarships to the faction’s own people. The faction is also concerned with appointing its members within the university, whether in academic or administrative positions. The faction is also interested in squeezing certain teachers and pursuing them administratively, hoping they grow weary and leave the university and the country altogether, and the faction may also be interested in academically promoting certain teachers, so the university president or the board of trustees searches for means to lend legitimacy to promoting those who do not deserve it.

There are many at universities in the territory occupied in 1967, university presidents included, who have received academic promotions they do not deserve at all, lacking sufficient research or outstanding teaching skills. Some university presidents have even received promotions on the basis of quasi-research papers at conferences, without meeting the scholarly requirements of scientific research. Some male and female teachers have received promotions without having any scientific research at all, and may have published research actually conducted by their own students.

I am a witness to how some university presidents used to call on faction students, whom they had appointed as president, to defend unjust measures they took, causing injustice to others as a result. It also happened that some of them called on armed thugs from outside the university walls to terrorize their opponents, rivals, or those dissatisfied with their actions.

Through this reliance, the university president facilitated the entry of weapons onto the campus, and weapons turned into a visible phenomenon terrorizing academics and administrators alike. Matters reached the point that a young man was killed one day on a Palestinian university campus because of factional disputes. This reliance produced a number of results, including:

1. Thugs and bullies began to see themselves as holders of power and influence, capable of pushing through whatever administrative measures and instructions they wanted to see at the university.

2. They gained the right to enter with weapons at their leisure, without encountering opposition from university security.

3. They turned the campus into a stage for various kinds of thugs who wanted to enter the campus for no reason other than practicing certain disgraceful behaviors.

4. They became a source of terror for teachers and administrators, and could ensure the success of whichever students they wanted.

5. It became easy to tamper with male and female students’ grades, because teachers feared the thugs and feared the harm that could result from not complying with requests to change grades.

6. Some grades could be changed outside official working hours. Even absences were sometimes erased, because these students rarely attended lectures. This happened to me at one university, where a student was removed from the class list at the end of the semester. When I asked why the student’s name did not appear on the list so I could record a failing grade for him, I was told the university president had removed his name because he was barred from the course due to absences, in order to spare him expulsion from the university because of his low cumulative average.

The situation of the boards of trustees is no different from that of the university president. Their appointment does not follow professional and academic standards, but political ones. A person understands the board of trustees’ duties if he is loyal to the power-holders, and is ignorant if he is not among the lovers of servitude. Sometimes the board of trustees expresses tribal interests primarily — meaning the university operates under the banner of a family or tribe, not necessarily under the banner of a faction. But the tribe cannot continue unless it gives its loyalty to the dominant faction. In this case, the university is pulled between two interests: the tribe’s interest and the faction’s interest, and the university must be the milk cow for both interests.

Boards of trustees sometimes tamper with promotions, sometimes intervene in appointments, and other times in grades. In many cases, they are far from trustworthy. I direct my remarks to most of the boards of trustees of our universities in the West Bank and Gaza, and I say what I say with documented information supporting my remarks.

Many members of boards of trustees do not possess scientific or academic expertise, and do not know well how to manage universities. Some obtain their membership because they are affiliated with a particular faction, and others become members because they are wealthy or belong to an influential family. According to my reading of the biographies of some of them, I found that a number have nothing to do with universities or with proper scholarly and academic conduct.

There is a functioning union at every West Bank university, perhaps with the exception of one security-affiliated university that does not yet believe in union work. At a number of universities, the union is not a workers’ union despite its name — it is the university president’s union. The university president usually controls the union, and it is he who forcefully participates in determining the list of members, striking out whomever he wishes and keeping whomever he wishes, and he interferes with the workers and how they vote, to the point of threatening an employee who wants to vote against the university president’s wish. Union elections occur at some universities, while at others the union body’s term is renewed at a general workers’ meeting by show of hands, in the pattern of the Arab republics’ elections, which used to elect a single unopposed candidate with a yes-or-no vote.

At one university, it happened that the university president dismissed the head of the union’s administrative body, immediately appointing a replacement holding a doctorate degree. Strangely, the workers stayed silent about this measure, and the replacement accepted the appointment despite being among those who always speak of the virtues of democracy. The workers accepted submission for themselves, and some universities turned into institutions resembling institutions of Arab despotism.

It happened to me that I criticized a university president in an article because he accepted a student who had failed the general secondary exam into architectural engineering. The workers’ union, which I was not a member of, stood against me, issuing a statement jointly with the student council and some student movements against me, demanding my removal from the university, and the Palestinian Authority arrested me for three days in a civil prison. The case was as clear as day, and my claim was proven and documented, but terror drove the workers’ union to stand against me, and the Authority should have arrested the university president, but instead arrested me — the reason being that I touched their interests when I defended the homeland and proper standards in admitting students. They may arrest me or assault me because of this article too.

We will not close this article without speaking of the academic situation. It happened that the Maan News Agency held a poll through its website to identify the outstanding in several fields, including the academic field. I noticed some students at a certain Palestinian university roaming the streets of Tulkarm, calling on people through loudspeakers to vote for a particular person — a university president. Another university president employed his university’s students to vote for him and pushed people to vote for him, not holding back from putting up promotional banners to mobilize voters. This was a poll meant to let people choose according to their own experience and what they aspire to. There should have been no interference, so the results would reflect what people truly think.

Some university presidents corrupted the poll. My assessment is that some did this to cover the deficiency dogging them, and to appear academically distinguished before people. Some achieved distinguished scores in the poll but lost far more standing among the people, because their game was exposed.

If we are searching for change in conditions in Palestine, we must begin with the universities, which are supposed to carry the national concern and be at the forefront of confronting the occupation. Universities are not supposed to be mounts for those searching for power, status, and money. These are universities for the Palestinian people, and are supposed to be pioneering in leading society toward liberation and freedom — otherwise we will have lost ourselves and squandered what remains of the homeland.

(Source of original publication: Al Jazeera)

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “عندما يدير الجامعات مراهقون” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.