Dec

13

Donate A Book To The AUI-S

Filed Under Iraq, MidEast Youth | 1 Comment

Here’s a post I wrote over at MidEast Youth about donating books to the new library of the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani.  This follows the lead of Christopher Hitchens, who publicized this appeal earlier this year in his weekly column at Slate:

It would seem unnecessary to remind people about the history that the lands of Mesopotamia have enriched our world’s civilization with; this, after all, was the land of knowledge transmission, the enrichment of the Arabic language, and the world’s center for translation. It was the scholarly home of Al-Khwarizmi and Ibn Sina, the poetic haven of ibn Burd and Abu Nawas. Yet today’s Iraq is void of many of its characteristics under Abbasid rule. Today’s Iraq suffers from the demons of political instability and the perils of economic development. This is not the place of enrichment and learning it once was; after the shadow of Saddam was dispelled, a wave of academic assassins targeted the country’s most prominent scholars. As early as 2004, over 1000 professionals and intellectuals had been killed, and the country’s schools no longer provided comfort in the safety of knowledge. Several thousand more had fled to safer horizons, and reports of this nature have not received respite in recent years. In a tragic occurrence of cultural significance symbolic of the dialectical tension between Iraq’s past and present, the nation’s national library was looted and set on fire in April of 2003, setting aflame centuries of history and culture.

One can, nonetheless, provide both hope and opportunity to Iraq’s future, even in a manner as miniscule as this. The American University of Iraq first opened its doors in 2007; its enrollment numbers, while initially humbling, are projected to reach over 1,000 students in 2011. Located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, the university provides a safe environment for students and their studies. AUI-S currently offers three undergraduate majors and a graduate MBA in international management and leadership. Its library is looking for an all-encompassing collection of material for students motivated to gain the knowledge of generations past and present.

You can read the whole post by clicking the first link.  For more of my posts at MidEast Youth, click here.