Last January and into part of February, I spent a month in the United States at the invitation of ten of the most famous universities in America as well as of six prestigious research centers specialized in Middle Eastern affairs. The purpose of this article is not to summarize the lectures I delivered at these universities or the long discussions that followed. The full texts of the lectures and transcripts of the discussions will appear in a book currently being prepared for publication by one of the universities I visited. Rather, the purpose of the article is to record some of the impressions I formed during my visit, lessons drawn from a trip on which I was privileged to address over a thousand  of the top American academics and experts concerned with the Middle East and with studying  its past, present and future from every angle of scientific research, especially in the field of social sciences.

The essence of these lessons can be summarized in the following five points:

I- On an Arab presence in influential Institutions :

From my visits to more than ten of the Middle East research centers with the greatest impact on what can be called the   kitchen of ideas, or think tanks,  in which US policies and attitudes are formed, including centres that have for years been supplying the State Department and the White House with Middle East specialists like Dennis Ross and many others before him, I noticed that despite the presence of sizeable contingents of Arab, Indian, Turkish and Iranian scholars and top experts in  many of these centres,  the members of each group do not interact as parts of a whole,  but act as individuals,  isolated islands scattered in a vast sea.  

In stark contrast to the  lack  of  cohesion  among the Arabs working in these institutions is an almost palpable sense of  community among their Jewish-American colleagues, who have forged strong professional and personal links among themselves as well as with  visiting Israeli scholars and pro-Israeli non-Jewish scholars. While the Arabs are fragmented and lack a higher aim transcending their individual personal aims, the members of the latter group operate in tandem as an integrated and synergistic team to attain well-defined short-, medium- and long-term goals. Their mastery of the language and idiom of the age and skillful use of the methodological tools of scientific research to further their common aim, their ability to speak to the world in which they are living in its own language, using its own cultural references and symbols, has enabled them to become an influential force capable of shaping,  to a great extent, the basic orientations of the United States in all matters related to the Middle East.

This situation is seen by some as merely confirming the validity of the conspiracy theory to which they subscribe, but that is a simplistic explanation for a phenomenon which is the result, rather, of a well thought out and diligently applied  programme of action, a strategic game plan whose application has met with very little resistance. A counter-plan to redress the balance of influence, so to speak, can only succeed through the concerted and sustained efforts of a team using modern research methods and speaking in the language of the age – requirements that are not met by most of the members of the Arab academic community in the United States, with the exception of a small minority made up largely of  Israeli  Arabs, that is, Palestinians who did not leave their towns after 1948. The other Arabs scattered in these universities and research centres would do well to emulate their example.  One of the most prominent Israeli Arabs is Haifa-born Dr.Shibley Telhami, who heads the Sadat Department in the University of Maryland and who has successfully mastered the rules of a game he plays with great skill to the advantage of the Arab side. Indeed, he is now a recognized Middle East expert whose opinion is sought by  decision-makers in the United States. The Arabs need hundreds more of his calibre, but these are unfortunately in short supply. 

The majority of Arabs working in these establishments are either concerned only with their own narrow interests,  passive  spectators of the wider world around them, or demagogues using the fiery language so popular in such throwbacks to the ’sixties as Al-Jazirah TV channel, which is reviving the declamatory style adopted by Arab media during a decade that must assume a large share of responsibility for developing an Arab mind-set in which the lines of demarcation between reality and rhetoric are often blurred.

The phenomenon of a substantial yet unfelt -and ineffectual- Arab presence in American universities and research centres needs to be addressed, and who better to do so than the Arab League, which has the resources to study the phenomenon in depth and lay down  programmes by which to maximize the strategic potential of that presence. However, it must under no circumstances embark on such a project in what Nizar Qabbani called “the logic of fiddle and drum”, that unnecessarily strident and unconvincing brand of demagogy that has distorted the image of the Arabs in the West and alienated public opinion. Indeed, we can expect no sympathy as long as we continue to conduct our discourse with the outside world in the form of verbal battles fought with the weapon of demagogy which, to quote Nizar Qabbani once again, “never killed a fly”.

II- On Education:

The discussions I had in more than ten universities with hundreds of faculty members, undergraduates and post-graduate students,  many  from Third World countries like India and China,  confirmed the validity of my  views on the subject of education in Egypt.  I  have  long  believed that before talking of educational reform in the generally accepted meaning of the term, which is the reform of the four pillars on which the institution of education rests (curricula, teachers, students, schools), we must first lay down the strategic aims of education in a policy paper -which need be no longer than one page- then design detailed programmes translating these aims into concrete procedures in regard to curricula, teachers, students and schools. I have also come to believe in the last three years in the existence of a direct connection between the strategic aims of education and the formation not only of modern citizens endowed with the qualities required to meet the challenges of the age, but also of a cadre of modern  management leaderships without which no society can make the required leap forward. 

For it is now generally accepted that the driving force for an economic take-off which realizes social justice, creates new job opportunities, spreads a positive spirit in society in general and among the middle and lower-middle classes in particular and preserves social  peace  while keeping abreast of the times -but without a loss of identity and  cultural specificity- is a cadre of efficient executive managers, not academics or economists, although their expertise in their chosen field of specialization is, of course, indispensable.

As I see it, the institution of education is responsible not only for providing students with a reasonable level of knowledge in applied and social sciences but for instilling in them a set of fundamental values like a respect for time, teamwork, perseverance and creativity,  as well as the firm conviction that human beings are the most important resource  for success and progress, that knowledge is universal and, parallel with this, the importance of respecting their own identity (without falling into the trap of chauvinism), the spirit of competition and a respect for pluralism and the Other.

Until we recognize the importance of making these values part and parcel of the educational process, our students will continue to lag far behind their peers in the advanced countries of the world, not in terms of intelligence, but of acquired skills. In the case of developed societies, these skills evolve as a natural by-product of an educational system based on the set of values mentioned above, while our students are locked behind high walls throughout their school then university years,  prisoners of a system based on stuffing their minds with massive amounts of often useless information and teaching them by rote.

A system in which the teacher is relegated to the role of a transmitter and the student to that of a receiver can only instill a spirit of apathy in its recipients, inhibiting any creative impulses they may have, reining in their imagination and stifling their intellectual curiosity and initiative. At best, it is a system capable of churning out traditional civil servants at a time the demand for their services is on the wane.  What is required in this day and age is not the public functionaries who were  once indispensable cogs in the wheel on which society ran,  but  creative, competitive citizens who can function within the framework of a team and who, recognizing that knowledge is universal, seek to acquire knowledge from any source that can help them hone their competitive edge.

While there is a pressing need for a complete overhaul of the educational system to bring it in line with the requirements of the age, it is imperative to embark on any process of  reform in the order we have outlined above, that is, by first  defining the long term goals of the educational process in Egypt in a strategic paper, then designing the programmes by which these goals can be reached at the level of curricula, teachers, students and schools. This is the only way not only to ensure the formation of modern citizens who are creative, committed and competitive, but also to solve a long list of problems which, though apparently unrelated to the issue of education, are in fact organically linked to it. These include:

1- The formation of a cadre of modern executive managers to lead economic life in the context of a new world order based on competition, whether globalization remains as ferocious as it now is or becomes  a tamer process in future, which I believe is more likely.

2- The formation of  dynamic citizens eager to participate in public life and to expand the margin of democracy.

3- The formation of citizens at peace with themselves and with others, both within their own communities and in other communities, instead of the disgruntled citizens who are becoming all too common in our society, who try to solve their problems with the sword of Jihad rather than  with the weapons of the age, through competition, hard work, creativity and keeping pace with the scientific and  cultural achievements of human civilization.

III- On economic conditions in Egypt:

In some twenty meetings, lectures, round-table discussions and television interviews, I was asked about the  economic situation in Egypt, and my reply went something like this:

* Before 1952, there was a thriving middle class in Egypt which somehow managed to be both Egyptian and cosmopolitan, traditional and modern, at one and the same time. But it was limited in size, which meant that it was unable to sustain Egypt’s liberal experiment in the political, economic and social spheres.

* The public sector experiment failed in Egypt for the same reason it failed in every single country that adopted it, which is because  the  public sector produces  administrators as opposed to managers. The difference between the two is the difference between administrative affairs and economic management. The establishment of a giant factory is not an aim in itself; the aim is that it should be economically successful. The public sector experiment proved that expressions like “political viability” and  “social viability” are misleading and that any project, however politically and socially viable it may purport to be, will collapse if it does not meet the criteria of economic feasibility.

* The transition from a socialist-inspired command economy to a free market economy was carried out rather haphazardly in the ’seventies. The groundwork for a smooth transition was not properly laid, and the task was not entrusted to those best equipped to perform it, namely, a cadre of efficient modern managers.

* The years between 1981 and 1991 were given over to infrastructural projects whose execution required massive outlays of money, time and energy without this being reflected in economic indicators.

* 1991 to 1997 saw the introduction of extensive fiscal reforms which, together with a moderate degree of economic reform, made for a relative improvement in the investment climate which was reflected in positive economic indicators.

* 1997 to 2000 saw the emergence of problems and difficulties whose significance must neither be downplayed nor overstated. One such problem was that the process of economic reform was not accompanied by a process of reform in the management structure based on a methodological plan designed to reduce the role of the state in size while expanding it in importance. The role of the state should focus on laying  down policies and following up their implementation in a spirit compatible with the ideal role of the state as envisaged by German Chancellor Konrad Adnauer in the early ’fifties, which is to serve as a  social compass for society.

There was also the problem of poor credit lending, a problem which cannot be solved through launching defamatory campaigns against suspected malefactors or throwing them in prison – unless of course there is clear evidence that a crime was in fact committed. Problems of this kind are not unique to Egypt, but have plagued many other countries, including some of the most advanced in the world, which have managed to solve them through banking procedures rather than media blitzes and police arrests.

It also became obvious during the same period that the regulatory  framework governing the investment climate needed to be further streamlined with a view to ultimately creating an investor-friendly climate akin to the Dubai model. Then there was  the question of national mega- projects which were exacting such a heavy toll on national resources that there was talk of abandoning them. While these projects do pose a problem, I believe scrapping them altogether would be an unnecessarily extreme measure, and that we should try instead to find a way of pushing ahead with their completion in different forms that can reduce the burden they are placing on the state treasury.

In short, there are problems it would be as much of an exaggeration to liken to a cancer as it would to a slight cold, problems that are an inevitable side product of any economic reform programme. All are  curable, even the problem of outstanding debt payments.

I always ended my comments on the economic situation in Egypt with the words of distinguished economics professor and member of the Shura Council Dr. Adel Bishai, who believes  solutions to current economic problems lie in the field of management, not economics, and recommends that they be inspired by advanced management techniques rather than devised by economics professors.