CAIRO: Four Ain Shams professors have been summoned for questioning by the university’s administration regarding an incident that occurred on campus earlier this month.
A delegation of 10 professors from Ain Shams and Cairo Universities were handing out summaries of a recent Cairo Administrative Court judgment that held that the presence of interior ministry security officers on Cairo University’s campus is illegal that these bodies must be replaced with security bodies answerable to the university.
Professor of English Literature Radwa Ashour says that she and nine other professors were accosted by a group of young men who snatched the leaflets out of the professors’ hands. Videos published by newspaper El-Youm El-Sabei’ show the young men attacking students who objected to their actions with knives, belts and chains.
Professor of French literature Hoda Abaza, professor of psychiatry Aida Seif El-Dawla and professor of Latin and Italian Iman Ezz Eddin, who all teach at Ain Shams, received letters summoning them for questioning last week.
Ashour noted that Ezz Eddin was not actually present on Nov. 4.
Ashour suggested that Ezz Eddin was included among those who will be questioned because of a comment she allegedly made regarding the university guards ruling during a meeting with the university president of Ain Shams. Her comment purportedly distinguished her as “opposition,” and her inclusion in the questioning “shows the logic of the whole thing,” according to Ashour.
While nothing in the letters made it clear what the questioning would be about, the letter received by Seif El-Dawla informed her that a memorandum against her had been sent to the university administration by the head of Ain Shams’ security.
In the interim period between Nov. 4 and when the professors received their letters last week, Ain Shams University issued a statement condemning the “attack” on the university by “strangers” who trespassed onto its campus.
Any clashes which did occur were caused by Ain Shams University students who “objected to the attack on the prestige of the university by outsiders” which resulted in a “sorrowful encounter.”
Ashour stated that the university’s statement is “unprecedented.”
“The use of thugs in student elections is not new,” said Ashour. “They’ve been doing this for decades. What is new this time is that the university administration openly supports the thugs,” she said.
Political activity is as tightly controlled on public university campuses as it is in Egyptian society in general. Much of this happens insidiously, in the form of back-door vetting of university appointments and the quiet removal of politically undesirable candidates — such as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood — from student election lists.
Sometimes, however, the interference is less disguised. According to university activists, this sort of meddling is actually directed by various interior ministry security officers who have remained permanently stationed on campus, despite the court ruling which deemed their on-campus presence illegal.
According to Ashour, on Nov. 4 the group of teachers had been distributing leaflets on campus for approximately 45 minutes before several “strange looking young men” appeared on campus and began snatching the leaflets from the professors’ hands.
Campus security officers watched the events unfold and did not intervene, said Ashour. When one of the journalists for El-Youm El-Sabei’ told a nearby officer that he had been physically assaulted by one of the “thugs,” the officer “simply left” and “didn’t interfere at all.”
When El-Youm El-Sabei’ journalist Mohamed El-Bedawy and Cairo University professor Abdel-Galil Mostafa went to the local police station to file a complaint, they discovered that their attackers had themselves already filed charges of assault against both El-Bedawy and Mostafa, including the allegation that Mostafa — who is more than 70 years old — broke one of the attackers’ arms.
Seif El-Dawla has identified one of the attackers to be Gharib, who is alleged to have been involved in some of the violence that took place during the university’s 2007 student elections.
The Ain Shams University’s website has issued a series of statements about the events of Nov. 4, including, on Nov. 23, the results of a student survey “which is the first of its kind to be carried out in an Egyptian university” and that aims to “involve partners in the learning process in addressing problems the university faces.”
The survey — which Ashour said was conducted by a group “nobody has ever heard of” — found that around 88 percent of the 6,000 Ain Shams students who were questioned had supported “the policies employed by the university’s administration during [the] crises.”
The survey further found that 80 percent of the same 6,000 Ain Shams students surveyed had thought that the Cairo University professors’ arrival onto Ain Shams University without prior permission constituted “a violation of the rights of Ain Shams University.”
In its latest statement, the university says that “a neutral investigations committee composed of law professors” has been investigating the incident since Nov. 6, and will listen to the testimony of “everyone involved in [the incident] … including professors, students, [and] administrative security … not only members of the teaching staff.”
Daily News Egypt asked Hanan Youssef, a spokesperson for Ain Shams University president Maged El-Deeb, why weapons are allowed on campus, why campus security officers did not stop the violence, and why the interior ministry security officers are still illegally stationed on the university’s campus.
Youssef asked Daily News Egypt to send her these questions via email. No response was received to Daily News Egypt’s email regarding these questions by press time.
Speaking two days after security forces opened fire on Coptic demonstrators, killing two, and on the eve of elections which witnessed fatalities and incidents of violence, Ashour describes the events of Nov. 4 as “a symptom of a growing fascism.”
“I always hoped that we could have a different space at university … What is happening in the streets is happening in the university,” said Ashour.
“It’s part … of what the whole society is witnessing now: repression, violence, lies, and farcical behavior on the part of … totally irresponsible people,” Ashour stated, adding that the motive behind all of these actions is “power at any price.”
