I believe that the only benefit of Obama’s visit to Egypt is in choosing Cairo University as the venue from which to reach out to the Muslim world. The world will watch as global media put Cairo University in the spotlight.
The university has suffered from negligence over the past three decades; the last important event held there was the speech by late President Anwar Sadat in the 1970s.
I remember when I graduated from the faculty of political science 13 years ago, I was honored, as part of the graduation ceremony, in the same room that will witness Obama’s speech to the Muslim world.
Since then, the hallowed dome of Cairo University has looked like an old man whose suffering is disregarded.
Historically, Cairo University has been recognized for churning out the best scientists, thinkers and scholars of the last century. It is the alma mater of national leaders including Saad Zaghloul, Mustafa Al-Nahas, Makram Obeid, Talaat Harb, Taha Hussein, Ahmed Lotfi Al-Sayed, Abdel-Razek Alsanhori and Naguib Mahfouz.
More recently, the likes of incumbent Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieddin, Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Mufid Shehab and other distinguished figures in Egypt and the Arab world have graduated from the university.
Cairo University houses one of the oldest clocks in the world, erected in 1937.
However, the university has fallen off the map of scientific excellence; in the last three years, it did not make it on the list of top 500 universities in the world.
Civil liberties within the university have diminished; student elections are not free; and security forces control everything on campus. They arrest students affiliated with opposition parties and suppress professors and scholars who are calling for more freedoms and better salaries.
Faculty and staff suffer from low living standards, the laboratories in the science schools are dilapidated and the standard of both teachers and students in the faculties of medicine, engineering and economics has declined.
Now Obama will restore the image of Cairo University by bringing it back under the spotlight. I wished Obama’s meeting would have been with students only, without politicians and members of the ruling party. I hoped that Obama would meet with Egyptian youth from Upper Egypt, the Delta, Sinai, and Matrouh, not with top businessmen and friends of the government. I wished that he had the chance to meet openly with ordinary Egyptians, to inspire them like his meeting with European youth in Strasbourg last April.
Nevertheless, I’d like to thank Obama for choosing Cairo University as the launching pad for this historical reconciliation with the Muslim world, and I am sure that this visit will be forever documented in history. Thank you, Mr President.
Khalil Al-Anani is an Egyptian expert on political Islam and democratization in the Middle East and is a senior fellow at Al-Ahram Foundation. E-mail: [email protected].
