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From KAU to KAUST : Saudi Arabia Goes High Tech at the University Level : With Nondiscrimination in Religion, Race and Gender

By Andis Kaulins

Via the @Stanford Newsletter, the Stanford News Service writes at Stanford to help new Saudi university in applied math, computer science:

"Stanford is joining a team of universities working to build a major science and technology university along a marshy peninsula on Saudi Arabia's western coast.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) will be an international, graduate-level research university, sponsored by Saudi Arabia's reigning monarch. The university, intended to be a showcase for modernization, broke ground last October with a lavish ceremony; it plans to open its doors to students in September 2009. The campus will start with an endowment in excess of $10 billion?one of the largest endowments in the world."

General Stanford principles of nondiscrimination as regards religion, race and gender are to be a part of KAUST, though it is doubtful that all nations will have equal access to education at KAUST since the university is still subject to Saudi laws, which still discriminate heavily against certain groups in terms of visa entry (Israel) and for example, driving of automobiles (no women).

But, it is a start in the right direction of leaving the fruitless path of religious extremist confrontation and joining the cooperative path of all humanity.

Read the full Stanford article here.

This is really quite a sensational development in international education and the discussion in the article concerning political and religious issues related to education is quite an eye-opener.

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).