The Faculty of Arts at Cairo University conducted on Saturday its first internal elections for the position of dean, which will become vacant at the end of July. Seven professors are competing to succeed the current dean, Zein al-Abidine Abu Khodra. Abu Khodra prevented journalists from covering the elections, saying that this was what had been agreed with the university administration. The elections witnessed a large turnout as sources confirmed that more than 40 percent - that is, 220 out of 473 members - of staff cast their votes before 1pm, though voting started at 9am and continued until 5pm. The professors running in the election are: Mustafa Nashar, from the Department of Philosophy; Randa Abu Bakr from the Department of English; Saeed Tawfiq, from the Department of Philosophy; Sheriff Shaheen from the Department of Documents and Libraries; Essam Hamza, from the Department of Japanese; Mohamed Afifi, from the Department of History; and Mohamed Naguib from the Department of Psychology. Hussein Khaled, vice president of Graduate Studies and Research, said professors took the decision to hold internal elections to choose a new dean and then inform officials whom to appoint. He added that if there is no fixed mechanism for the SCAF and the cabinet to select new deans, they will have to yield to the will of the staff. In other news, higher education staff stressed during a conference on Friday in Alexandria that all current faculty leaders must leave office by the end of the academic year, saying that if they do not go protests and strikes will be staged by the end of July. Hani al-Husseini, a founding member of the 9 March Movement for the autonomy of universities, said that the professors decided that there will be no coming school year if Mubarak-era leaders are not sacked, because "they are the agents of Mubarak." Translated from the Arabic Edition
