Arab Universities and the Challenges of Social Change

الجامعات العربية وتحديات التغير الاجتماعي

The prevailing model in the governance of Arab universities is the political model. In this model, academic freedoms, participation and the generation of new ideas required for social change are tightly restricted. This is accompanied by the weakness of civil culture in the discourse of university leadership and their main charters regarding questions such as democracy, the culture of law, civil commitment, humanities and the pedagogy of research and discussion. These universities treat science and technology as elite specialisations, while the humanities are marginalized, as the destination of students with lower grades. Given that graduates from these specialisations are the people who will drive societal socialisation, with limited cumulative knowledge and a strong tendency towards social subordination. The conclusion of the paper is that subordinate socialization triumphs over the function of social change in government universities.

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Abstract

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The prevailing model in the governance of Arab universities is the political model. In this model, academic freedoms, participation and the generation of new ideas required for social change are tightly restricted. This is accompanied by the weakness of civil culture in the discourse of university leadership and their main charters regarding questions such as democracy, the culture of law, civil commitment, humanities and the pedagogy of research and discussion. These universities treat science and technology as elite specialisations, while the humanities are marginalized, as the destination of students with lower grades. Given that graduates from these specialisations are the people who will drive societal socialisation, with limited cumulative knowledge and a strong tendency towards social subordination. The conclusion of the paper is that subordinate socialization triumphs over the function of social change in government universities.

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