Saudi Arabia: In Science We Trust

Saudi Arabia shows that it can go a long way in instituting policies that make the kingdom more appealing to Western academia  | IslamOnline.net

Say a Western political leader takes to heart the views of writer Ann Coulter and decides to enact an exceedingly moderate version of her recommendations – that is, to force Saudi Arabia to grant more rights to women and turning Saudi’s single-sex schools into co-ed institutions. What will it take to do this?  Nothing short of a war, and a massive disturbance to an already shaky oil market if the world’s largest producer is put out of business.

Or there is another way: help the Saudis build a university, and they may just willingly do what otherwise only an invasion might force them to.

The now-underway King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is a case in point. Scheduled for formal inauguration in September 2009, KAUST, whose grant and scholarship programs have already started, boasts several firsts for the oil kingdom. It is to be the first co-ed educational center in Saudi Arabia. The university’s scholarships and grants are open to all, regardless of religion and nationality. It is headed by a non-Saudi, Shih Choon Fong, a Harvard-trained academic with an impressive track record in leading world-class academic institutions. And the university’s endowment and operations are overseen, not by the education ministry, but by an international advisory council whose independence is enshrined in the institution’s founding charter.

Innovative Approach  

Equally important, however, are KAUST’s innovations in how to engage with outside, particularly Western, academia. The new university is experimenting with a novel approach for engaging researchers around the world. Instead of inviting researchers and educators to work in Saudi Arabia on short or medium-term contracts, the kingdom is offering funds of several million dollars to researchers working on areas it deems especially important (such as hydrocarbon efficiency) without having to   leave their home institutions. 

In return, Saudi Arabia expects researchers to report on their research  progress and participate annually in workshops or academic gatherings in the kingdom.This way Saudi  Arabia is building a web of relationships with multiple universities – from the US, Europe, and Asia –  instead of calling upon one school to provide the whole package. The latter approach is adopted by Saudi Arabia’s smaller neighbors, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in particular, with partners including Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Georgetown, and (soon) New York universities.

These innovations should not be lost on observers and academics in the West. First, by initiating some
unexpected social changes (such as the co-ed classes and opening up scholarships for a worldwide audience), Saudi Arabia shows that it can go a long way in instituting policies that make the kingdom more appealing to Western academia. Second, these latest developments signal an understanding that for Saudi Arabia to catch up scientifically, it needs to play by the rules of science and academic institutions. 

Increasingly, Saudi Arabia understands that money (alone) cannot get the best science and research talents; rather you can only attract those by aligning your interests with theirs.

So the inflated confidence in the ability of petrodollars to buy everything is giving way to a realistic
understanding of the dynamics of higher-education and science institutions.

This is a marked departure from the initiatives of the mid-1970s and 1980s – when the first  and second oil windfalls struck. Back then, the petrodollar kingdom had experimented with attempts to bring scientists in, with very little success. For instance, the lofty goals that were set for the King Abdul Aziz City of Science and Technology (KACST), established in 1977, hardly materialized. No stronger proof of this than the establishment of KAUST.

Over the years, however, as more Saudis studied at American and European universities, Saudi Arabia has accumulated new knowledge on how academic institutions work, and how to entice them into partnerships. No surprise that Aramco and the oil ministry, with perhaps the highest concentration of foreign-educated Saudis, led KAUST’s initial efforts. 

Under Control 

Why does Saudi Arabia want to be attractive to Western academia? Almost every policy report on Saudi Arabia talks about the demographic crisis. More than 60 per cent of Saudis are under the age of 25. That requires an economy that works at full-speed to create jobs. An economy that is diverse and efficient. Thus the need for new knowledge to be pumped into Saudi’s academia in the hopes of creating new sectors in the economy.

Yet it is not all economics. Probably more important, it is about opening up the kingdom to new ideas. Saudi Arabia had had its own 9/11 in 2003, when terrorists attacked housing complexes of Westerners in Riyadh. To forestall another attack, the Saudi leadership seems willing to allow some openings into the otherwise mostly opaque kingdom.

Which is not to say that Saudi Arabia is suddenly becoming the beacon of liberalism in the region. The Saudi leadership has over the years shown a meticulous and shrewdly calculating mentality when it comes to policy and reform decisions. Thus, as they go ahead with these steps, the Saudi leaders are making sure that the experiment is tightly controlled. After all, the KAUST campus will be literally insulated from the larger kingdom. It is to be a closed campus, on the remote shores of the Red Sea, with its own housing facilities – and even its own airport. This means that in the event of failure, or too strong a backlash from the Saudi society, things can be easily rolled back.

These measures probably explain the skepticism some universities and journals (like Nature) have expressed about whether a Saudi university can “think freely.”

Also noteworthy is the fact that Saudi Arabia is kicking off these policies as part of a science and education project. The Saudi leadership seems to think that science and scientists are the least likely to set off alarms among the people of Saudi Arabia who, particularly after the war in Iraq, became generally more skeptical of what is perceived to be American dominance in the region. By contrast, science, a pursuit Islam encourages and honors, is perceived to be culturally neutral. Therefore, the changes science necessitates are often accepted or condoned.

Still, that Saudi Arabia is overcautious as it goes about its new plans does not diminish the significance of its moves. And American politicians, particularly in the election season, and leaders of academic institutions need to take notice. Instead of the unproductive rhetoric about “funding both sides of the
war on terror,” America, the Arab Gulf states, and the larger Middle East are better served if the US starts an aggressive intervention strategy, not with its military, but with its universities and research
institutions, assets that continue to be the envy of the world.