University teachers lend their voice to growing calls for political reform, reports Gihan Shahine That the stolid quarters of faculty clubs are now a venue for dissent where conservative -- many of them government- appointed -- academics express their frustration over professional and political issues is seen by many as a symbol of the snowballing of popular discontent. University teachers, who have long remained silent over a host of issues ranging from low salaries to security interference in university affairs, seem at last to be stirring, with many joining opposition groups in their call for reform. Academic dissent first hit the headlines on 19 April when 100 Cairo University professors, dressed in black gowns, staged a one-hour march before handing the university president a 20-page memorandum entitled No to Security Interference in the University. By last week those 100 had turned into more than 2,000 who attended a six-hour rally at the Cairo Faculty Club calling for academic and political reforms. They demanded that the security apparatus stop meddling in academic affairs, and called for salaries to be increased. More significantly, perhaps, their demands extended beyond campuses. They called for the release of seven colleagues, recently detained on charges of alleged membership in a banned group, and for the 24- year-old state of emergency to be repealed. University teachers, who include members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, have also expressed support for the opposition boycott of yesterday's referendum and issued statements supporting the recent call by judges for the full judicial oversight of presidential elections. Some professors have threatened to slow down the release of final exam results should the government fail to respond to faculty demands. "We can't take it anymore," says Yehya El-Qazzaz, professor of geology at Helwan University. "The levels of corruption are too much to bear. We are up to our ears in it." "Universities have sunk to such a level that if we fail to act now the situation will be beyond all salvage," says Adel Abdel- Gawad, head of the Cairo Faculty Club. "There is no going back on our demands and if the government does not release our colleagues more protests will erupt," promised Layla Sweif, assistant professor of Mathematics at Cairo University's Faculty of Sciences. The security services, say many university teachers, meddle in the appointment and promotion of lecturers, travel abroad by faculty members, university academic events and academic contacts between faculty and foreign academics. "The university is run by the security services, not the university administration," El-Qazzaz snapped. And this, he says, has led to a vicious cycle of corruption in which academics are promoted on the basis of their perceived loyalty to the regime. "It leaves only pro-government figures in leading positions," complains El-Qazzaz, "and they, in return, pander to security demands at the expense of faculty interests to remain in post." El-Qazzaz cites the experience of an English literature professor at Ain Shams University who was referred to interrogation and suspended from work following a complaint he made against a security officer who had attacked him on campus. Every single event organised on campus, including conference and scientific trips, says Sweif, depends on securing the permission of the security services. "They have to approve lists of speakers, topics, even the dates of conferences," she said. There have been cases, revealed Abdel- Gawad, where students who graduate at the top of their year have been refused faculty appointments out of "security concerns". And rumours are rife of interference in the Students' Union elections. "Islamist students get their names removed from electoral lists and sometimes are suspended or detained before they can run for elections, many missing exams as a result," one student told Al-Ahram Weekly. Such incidents, coupled with low salaries, led a group of politically-active professors to launch a reform movement two years ago under the name 9 March -- the date in 1932 on which Lotfi El-Sayed, president of Cairo University, resigned in order to protest against Taha Hussein's removal from his post as dean of the Faculty of Arts to the Ministry of Education. "Compare the attitude of El-Sayed with that of current university heads," says El- Qazzaz. But why have university teachers decided to act now, after so many years of silence? "People have reached a stage where they can no longer remain silent. We are, after all, part of society," answers Sweif. El-Qazzaz, who is also a member of Kifaya, credits the movement for catalysing the current spate of protests from groups ranging from judges to workers, Islamists to Copts. "We are all in the same boat," says El- Qazzaz. "And that explains why we are joining hands with the judges as well as with opposition movements like Kifaya and the Brotherhood." The restrictions placed by the People's Assembly of presidential candidates came as the final straw, believes Abdel-Gawad. "Like everyone else we had high hopes when the president called for constitutional reform to allow for multiple candidate elections. And now, at a single stroke, those hopes have been demolished." Abdel-Gawad told the Weekly.
