Palestinian Campus looks to East Bank (of Hudson)

[LeftishBrit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/world/middleeast/15quds.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=Al%20Quds&st=cse


It would be hard to find two institutions of higher learning that seem more different than Bard College, an upscale, bucolic college in Dutchess County, N.Y., and Al Quds University, a struggling, sprawling in and near this disputed capital.


...The plan, relying largely on outside financing, includes a liberal arts honors college and a master’s degree program in teaching, both located at Al Quds and granting joint degrees, as well as a model high school to serve as an educational laboratory. The starting date for the first two is September; the high school is to open in 2010.

...Bard anticipates complaints from some American Jews unhappy because Al Quds is a Palestinian institution partly in Jerusalem — which many Jews consider the indivisible capital of Israel — and because Al Quds is no stranger to radical Palestinian politics. Meanwhile, Al Quds expects some Palestinians to resent the endeavor as vaguely colonialist. And the collaboration by two such disparate institutions is bound to be complicated.

...Mr. Nusseibeh, who has run Al Quds for 14 years, has created academic exchange programs with Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., as well as with George Washington University in Washington and universities in Israel, Sweden and Canada. The Bard program will offer the first joint degree.

“The radius of movement of most of our students does not exceed 40 miles,” Mr. Nusseibeh said as he sat in his East Jerusalem office one recent morning. “We need to help them see the world through different eyes.