Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” While many Cal Poly faculty members’ views resonate with that ethos, there are few that can openly oppose the Saudi Arabia deal; most of the faculty refrain because there is a perception of possible retaliation and/or retribution by the university.
During the past year, we have all seen the morally shaky stance taken by the Cal Poly administration to defend the pursuit of a highly questionable partnership with Jubail University College (JUC) in Saudi Arabia. The administration has ignored the strong opposition from an overwhelming majority of Cal Poly stakeholders: students, faculty, staff, donors, alumni, the media and several external organizations.
Let’s start by reminding ourselves who we are and who we are not. Cal Poly is a state-funded university whose altruistic obligations are to the citizens of California. We are a secular entity, not a private philanthropic seminary with the goal of sending missionaries to change the deplorable human rights violations and corrupt values of distant and hostile lands.
We also do not have a surplus of idle faculty or staff resources that need to be given externally-funded tasks to keep them occupied; ironically, our reality is quite the opposite.
It is reasonable to pose the following unanswered questions to frame the Saudi misadventure from the viewpoint of we who continue to oppose the Saudi deal because the justifications and arguments we have heard from the administration to date seem to lack credibility.
1) WHY should Cal Poly help set up a university program in Saudi Arabia if there is no profitable benefit for Cal Poly students? That is the commendable first question asked by both Berkeley and Stanford when King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia approached them with a similar request resulting in a $10 million compensation in addition to full reimbursement of all incurred costs. Cal Poly’s proposed deal with JUC only reimburses our costs but gives us no outright monetary reward.
KAUST, unlike the JUC deal that Cal Poly just signed, is also immune from the Shariah rules that dictate gender segregation and limited academic freedom. (To see the Los Angeles Times’ article on July 13 outlining the “coed classes, Western professors, a curriculum in English and other touches loathed as dangerous liberalism by Islamic fundamentalists” that KAUST will offer, go to http://tinyurl.com/KaustUniv).
2) WHY should we believe that the Saudi deal would allow Cal Poly engineering faculty to “experiment” with radical new approaches to learning? The Saudis aren’t so naive that they are willing to be guinea pigs for our educational experiments when they could opt for the unashamed cloning of the widely acclaimed Cal Poly legacy of “learn by doing.” This deal is not for the enhancement of our curriculum, but for theirs.
3) WHY should we believe the argument that our engagement at JUC will begin to chip away at current Saudi values and human rights violations? This naive argument ignores the U.S. State Department’s warning that visitors strictly refrain from any form of evangelical sermonizing of values to Saudis.
Do we really want to place our faculty and staff at high risk in the land of barbaric justice? We all remember the harsh sentence of 200 lashes stipulated by the Saudi courts on an innocent Saudi woman who was gang raped, but happened to be in a car with a non-related male. The King – only in response to global condemnation – finally issued a pardon to prevent the public lashing of the innocent rape victim. That is the nature of the Saudi judiciary we are dealing with.
4) WHY is the Cal Poly administration so entrenched in sticking with this highly controversial endeavor when it continues to be the most damaging PR disaster to date for Cal Poly? The wide-ranging media reports of this debacle are consistently critical on the lack of wisdom by Cal Poly in this venture.
5) WHY is College of Engineering Dean Mohammad Noori – the leading proponent of this misadventure – always “not-available” to the media for interviews? Provost Bill Durgin has fielded all media questions and has been bruised by the critics.
6) WHY does the administration justify the deal with the argument of so-called “academic freedom” for the faculty who choose to participate while denying others the right to openly debate the issue? The Senate Executive Committee caved in to intimidating pressure from the administration to prevent open debate by the full Senate. The Senate had initially opposed this questionable Saudi deal via a resolution drafted by five past chairs and other faculty.
7) WHY are the Provost and Dean Noori defending the morality of dealing with the Saudis on the grounds that morals are relative and we are not to judge the Saudis? Would it be OK to allow a Cal Poly research project if it related to promoting Nazi ideals or collaborating with the Ku Klux Klan on some odious topic?
The Cal Poly community and our external supporters would like to know WHY we are stubbornly adhering to the wrong path on this sour proposition. There are still too many serious questions and too few substantial responses from our administration to finalize this dubious deal.
Unny Menon is an industrial and manufacturing engineering professor, a former associate dean of the College of Engineering, a current member of the Academic Senate, and a previous Academic Senate chair.
Editor’s Note: Cal Poly has signed the contract and sent it to JUC, dean of research and graduate programs Susan Opava-Stitzer said. The contract was delivered to JUC on July 10 and the university is “just waiting” for a response, which they expected by now.