Laila Soueif* reports on the events of last week's University Independence Day On 9 March 1932 Ahmed Lutfi El-Sayed resigned his post as rector of what is now Cairo University in protest against the dismissal of Taha Hussein as dean of the Faculty of Arts by the minister of education without consulting the university board of directors. A few years ago Hani El-Husseini, assistant professor of mathematics at the Faculty of Science, Cairo University, started promoting the idea of marking the day and suggested it be called University Independence Day. The idea didn't catch on until the end of 2003 when the University Independence Group, more commonly known as 9 March Group, was founded. We have come a long way since then. In 2004 we had to fight a long battle with the administration, in order to get a hall in which to hold our first conference. We brought to bear every pressure tactic we could think of, from newspaper articles by friendly columnists (and there were many of them), to threatening to hold the conference on the university steps if a hall wasn't provided. In the end it was, and the meeting was a great success with many eminent professors and guests attending. Last year, with the new President Ali Abdel-Rahman, there was no confrontation though there was a lot of prevarication. No outright refusal, just things like the unavailability of any hall in any part of Cairo University on 9 March during any portion of the day. It was suggested the conference be postponed for a couple of days. A hall did, however, materialise when it became obvious that we were not to be deflected or deterred. This year there were no such delaying tactics. We were to have the hall at the time of our choosing. The theme of this year's conference was "Academic Freedoms in Egyptian Universities: The Present Situation". Mohamed Abul-Ghar, the well-known gynecologist and one of the most indefatigable activists of 9 March -- the press often dubs him the godfather of the group -- invited Abdel-Rahman and his vice-presidents to present the administration's view. They declined to give formal presentations but promised to attend and comment. Both the vice-president for student affairs, Hamed Taher, and the vice-president for community and environmental affairs, Abdallah El-Tatawi, did attend and their comments made headlines in two independent dailies, Al-Masri Al-Yom and Nahdat Masr. The conference was in two sessions and lasted from 1pm to 6pm. There were seven presentations and more than 20 comments from the floor. It is impossible in the space of an article to give a complete account of the proceedings and readers who are interested can read the summaries of presentations on www.march9online.net. There they will also find the full text of the booklet on Security Interventions in Egyptian Universities which was compiled by members of 9 March and distributed during the conference. From Abdel-Galil Mustafa (professor emeritus of internal medicine, Cairo University) who presented the view of the group as a whole, to Noha Hassan, a student at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, who gave a description of the state of academic freedoms in Egyptian universities from a student's perspective, the picture that emerged was of universities where academic freedom, along with most other academic values, are constantly sacrificed to the security of the regime, corruption, and sometimes even for the sake of the personal ambitions and ideological prejudices of staff members. Some of the titles of presentations were evocative: "University Laws in the Service of the Paradigm of Comprehensive Corruption", by Hossam Issa, professor of law, Ain Shams University; "The Security Siege of the University", by Hani El-Husseini, and "Academic Freedoms, Between a Rock and a Hard Place", by Awatef Abdel-Rahman, professor emerita of Journalism, Cairo University. Salem Sallam, professor of pediatric medicine, Al-Minya University, advocated the necessity of an independent academic panel, preferably elected by staff members, to act as arbiters in internal university disputes, and to investigate claims of corruption or abuse of power by university administrative authorities. The present situation, which places the referral of such complaints to an investigator answerable to the president of the university, has time and again proved inadequate and subject to abuse. Iman Ismail, Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, gave a critical appraisal of the report on academic freedoms in Egypt Reading Between the Red Lines: The Repression of Academic Freedom in Egyptian Universities, issued by Human Rights Watch in May 2005. Most of the comments, with the notable exception of the two vice-presidents of Cairo University, praised the group warmly, and lauded its efforts in the cause of university independence. Some comments gave further instances of abuse of academic freedom and of the general degradation of academic standards and university life. Many of the comments could be taken as an inducement for 9 March to widen its mandate to tackle other issues in university life, or even national politics. As those who read the excellent article written by Sayed El-Bahrawi in Al-Ahram Weekly ('Significant dates', 9-15 March 2006) will know, this topic is often discussed within the group. My personal view, part of which I tried to articulate in my comments to the conference, is that members of 9 March consider themselves as part of the wider movement for reform being born in Egypt today. This is witnessed by the fact that the majority of our members are activists within various political movements, NGOs and professional syndicates and also, more tellingly perhaps, by the recommendations of our conference. However, 9 March cannot tackle every issue on the reform agenda. Rather, it can be regarded as a model that has proved reasonably successful in focussing public awareness on the issue of academic freedom. This model might well prove useful for other groups working on other issues. The main components of this model include the selection of an issue of public interest on which there is a consensus among members of the group as well as, hopefully, among a large part of their target audience, despite different political and ideological affiliations; work is organised in a very flexible manner to allow for the greatest possible freedom for members to pursue personal initiatives; work is public, and is begun without seeking official approval. This last trait is already shared by many movements such as Kifaya, the Free Students' Union, Engineers Against Sequestration, Artists for Change, Youth for Change, and so on. It is, in a way, the trademark of the so-called "new movements". Conference recommendations included some that were directly related to academic freedom, such as the right of different colleges to decide their academic agenda, including exam procedures and the abrogation of the statute governing students' extra curricular activities issued in 1979 and its redrafting in a democratic manner. Allowing students to express themselves freely, organise their own activities and elect representatives without the intervention of security or administrative personnel were also among the recommendations, as was the election, rather than appointment, of university administrators. Elections should be held immediately in staff clubs. With the exception of Cairo and Suez staff club, boards have either outstayed their mandate by years or were never elected in the first place. The conference also recommended that the university finance research sabbaticals for staff members and the university administration take a strong stand against plagiarism. Finally conference members expressed their solidarity with Egypt's judges in their own courageous struggle for independence. Concerning the comments of the two vice-presidents and the replies they provoked: El-Tatawi insisted that he was speaking not as an administrator but as a staff member. He said that he would not vouch for what happened in other universities but, as far as Cairo University was concerned, academic freedoms were not abused. No subject was taboo, he said, when it came to scientific research, and most of the speakers' demands had already been met or would soon be. He denied that state security had ever prevented an invited guest from addressing a seminar, and went on to deny a specific incident El-Husseini mentioned in his presentation when the Centre for Research on Developing Countries, part of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, was prevented by state security from issuing an invitation to the well known political commentator Hamdi Qandil. This last provoked the head of centre, Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed, to reply. He gave a blow-by-blow account of the whole incident. Taher began his comments by claiming that it was natural for the subjects of religion and sex to be taboo -- these along with politics were the subject of the red lines mentioned in the HRW report -- and that this was completely consistent with our national values and character. He then went on to justify the heavy presence of security forces in and around the universities. These forces were there to protect university buildings, to prevent scuffles between Islamists and other groups, and to prevent students from taking drugs on campus. The security forces surrounding Cairo University, he went on, were necessary because of the proximity of the Israeli Embassy which had to be protected from potential demonstrators. The whole country, including the universities, he concluded, was governed by emergency laws according to which the security forces can do what they like. The intervention provoked a torrent of retorts, impossible to report here for lack of space. You could almost pity the government, with friends like these. * The writer is an assistant professor of mathematics at Cairo University and a member of the 9 March Group.
