I Really Feel Sorry for the Universities in the Palestinian Authority
A new announcement on the website of An-Najah National University in Nablus made me aware of something: The university must find itself between a rock and a hard place!
I suppose all universities in the Palestinian Authority (PA) find themselves in the same bind: On the one hand, they need to convince the world of how their students and faculty are hamstrung by the Israeli “occupation” in order to promote the academic BDS movement in the United States and elsewhere. On the other hand, they must show academic achievements and increase their scholastic ranking in order for their students and faculty to be invited to international conferences, publish in recognized international journals and more. They cannot justify their existence if they do not attract high quality students who pay tuition fees and high quality faculty to instruct those students and actually write the papers that will hopefully be published in journals with high standards. They also like to attract foreign students with their higher tuition fees payable.
Therefore, it must be with mixed feelings that An-Najah University announced the approval of a new PhD programme.
The PhD program in Sustainable Energy Technology is a multi-disciplinary doctoral program. It aims to solve future challenges in the energy area by developing new energy technologies.
Future graduates will find career opportunities in different fields of sustainable energy as energy consultants, energy auditors, and environmental managers.
And just look at their relatively new campus, inaugurated in 2006 by PA President Mahmoud Abbas:
An-Najah University campus. Credit: screenshot from the university website.
Poor downtrodden An-Najah University, indeed!
