Widespread threats against Iraqi university staff have all but stripped the country of its intellectual core, particularly in Baghdad. According to the country’s higher education ministry, 240 lecturers were killed from 2003 to October 2007.
New York University officials have emphasized the "academic freedom" students will have at NYUAD; the university has been given carte blanche control over the campus' operations.
As some of the estimated six million-plus children registered in Iraq for primary and secondary schools began drifting back to classes this week, concerns over their security remained uppermost in the minds of parents, teachers and pupils.
"The cumulative impact of years of violence and closures, of disrupted schooling and endemic poverty is clear from the stark exam results of Gaza's school children,"...
