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C. 8 |
Other Fields or Components Considered |
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It has been the Commission's responsibility to be very wide-ranging
in its concerns. We have consequently considered more possibilities
for AKU's future than we think it can embrace. We take comfort
that some important subjects that we felt could not have a component
of their own are addressed more than casually in ones we have
proposed. But we should mention briefly here some possible components
that we have seriously discussed but do not think we should
include in our recommendations. |
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8.1 |
An Institute or Faculty of Gorernance or Public Administration
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8.1.1 |
The Commission could not fall to be impressed with the gravity
of the need for peace, public order, and good governance in
the developing and Muslim worlds. The papers we have read included
such gruesome facts as the Conservative estimate that more than
12 million people have died in civil wars in the developing
world since 1950, and that "the most important cause of famine
in developing countries in recent years has not been inadequate
agricultural output or poverty, but military conflict" [World
Development Report, 1991]. We have also been aware that
massive disillusionment with the corruption and mismanagement
of governments has been one of the major sources of the appeal
of extremist movements. If we had not been sufficiently motivated
ourselves by such observations, we were given a further stimulus
to look at what AKU might do about governance problems by the
Chancellor's request at our first meeting in Washington in October
1992. |
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8.1.2 |
A special paper, entitled "What AKU might do for better governance
of Muslim societies" was discussed at the Commission's September
1993 meeting in London, and we have reverted to the subject
many times in other meetings. The London paper distinguished
four ways in which universities may affect political order and
governance : |
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(1) |
through educating executives and professional specialists
essential to the functioning of modern governments; |
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(2) |
by being a source of political ideas and experience for students; |
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(3) |
by providing political leadership for their countries; and |
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(4) |
by providing ideas, doctrines and scholarship that influence
the political life of nation-states. |
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8.1.3 |
Enumerating the ways a university can have effects shows quickly
that a special component to deal with the problems of governance
might well neglect some of the most important things a university
can do. We did discuss the recommendation of the Harvard Committee
for a Centre or School of Development Planning and Management
that would have had a substantial role in the training of civil
servants and managers of public enterprises. We discussed without
much enthusiasm the possibility that a small, private university
such as AKU would be able to raise the professional competencies
of public services. We were thus led away from a special component
of AKU to deal with governance matters, to consider what the
University might contribute through its various branches and
components. |
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8.1.4 |
The prospects we see are encouraging. Recommendations we are
making for broadening professional education in AKU and ultimately
establishing a Faculty or College of Arts and Sciences are aimed
at making better citizens and leaders for the countries AKU
can affect. This is a diffuse and long-term process but not,
we think, thereby inconsequential. Perhaps too much has been
said and written about the playing fields of Eton or Mark Hopkins
at the end of a log, but it would be to despair of one of the
highest purposes of education to deny its influence on the quality
of political leadership. We are confident that some of AKU's
graduates in the next decades will have opportunities in political
leadership and we think their education must not ignore this
possibility. We also think that AKU will be able to contribute
more immediately and tangibly to analysis and understanding
of the problems of governance by the research and scholarship
it promotes. The Institute of Islamic Civilisations would be
disappointing if at some point it did not bring forth helpful
and illuminating work on the governance of Muslim societies.
And we have stressed the failures of government among the determinants
of economic progress that the Institute of Economic Growth and
Society would tackle. There are obviously some hazards for a
university in venturing to tell how societies might be governed
better (and there are perhaps even greater dangers of being
quite ignored). But AKU could not shirk the challenges of finding
ways toward better-governed societies without shirking its basic
mission in service to the developing and Muslim worlds. |
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8.2 |
A Department or Institute Of Information and Computer
Sciences |
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We have seen abundant reasons for AKU to have first class
competencies in the modern technologies of communication and
information. We have argued that, as an international university
it must make special efforts to stay on the "information superhighways"
of the world. In each of the fields we have discussed above
-including even the most traditional fields of the humanities
- there are such pervasive effects of these new competencies
that the staff and students of AKU will be under constant pressure
to extend their knowledge and masteries. In the Health Sciences,
The Economist in the survey cited earlier depicted veritable
revolutions in surgery, diagnosis and other fields and an indispensable
set of' linkages between any particular medical centre and others
throughout the world. In research, whether in biomedical fields
or in health systems and health policy, access to data, the
literature of the fields, and analytic capacity require not
only powerful computer resources but confident use of them.
In architeciure, the Harvard-MlT programme.has already been
through an ambitious (and premature) effort to make a library
of images available throughout the world.New and better CD-ROM's
will surely follow in this field as In others; and a stroll
to the-Dawood College of Engineering and Technology from the
AKU campus quickly shows how indispensable computers already
are to the teaching and practice of architecture and urban planning.
The indispensability of capacity to handle large datasets and
to manipulate complex models are evident in economic development
studies and in studies of education and human development that
we project in AKU's future. |
