Al-Musharaka Blog

The Scholars at Risk Network regularly sends out a compilation of articles addressing academic freedom issues over the past week. Below is the most recent mailing, sent by Clare Robinson, a Program Officer for the network.

Hearing in lawsuit against 'terrorist' travel ban
Associated Press, ABC, 7/11

UC opposes bill to protect journalism adviser
Rita Simerly, The California Aggie, 7/10

Gaza Fulbright scholars a step closer to U.S. study
Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 7/10

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Egyptian authorities have just released a student who was arrested while working as a translator for an American graduate student photographing demonstrations, in part due to the efforts of a network of cyber activists, CNN reports.

When Karl Buck, a graduate student from University of California at Berkeley, and his Egyptian translator Mohammed Maree, a 23-year-old veterinary student, were arrested while photographing anti-government protests over low wages and rising food prices in April, Buck sent a one word posting from his cell phone to the microblog service Twitter alerting his family and friends. His school hired an attorney and he was released immediately. Maree, however, remained in detention.

Buck returned home and used his Twitter network, now more than 570 followers strong, to help free his translator and friend.

Fueled by the gnawing guilt of leaving Maree behind, Buck set out to enlist all the help he could in hopes of sparking a movement for the translator's release.

He began setting up a virtual online command post to demand Maree's release. He contacted U.S. and Egyptian authorities and human rights groups and used everything from Twitter updates, blog posts on his Web site to an electronic petition signed by more than 900 people.

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King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Saudi Arabia is re-introducing a preparoty year of study for its students, a system that existed in the college approximately 40 years ago, but which was dropped shortly therafter. The goal is to decrease the number of students who swich their major after a year or two. An article on Arab News on July 6 reports:

Dr. Osama Taib, KAU’s dean, told a press conference that many students, who take up courses under pressure from family or friends, end up changing their majors after wasting an entire year or two.

Haitham Zakai, general supervisor of public relations and media at KAU, said, “The preparatory year will release the pressure that students usually feel when they start college... Students will take simple basic courses in various subjects to help them decide where their interests and skills are.”

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Though the growth of Al-Qaeda's global movement was greatly facilitated by effective use of the Internet, an article by Daniel Kimmage in today's New York Times argues that they have fallen behind recent trends in web development.

But the Qaeda media nexus, as advanced as it is, is old hat. If Web 1.0 was about creating the snazziest official Web resources and Web 2.0 is about letting users run wild with self-created content and interactivity, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are stuck in 1.0.

In late 2006, with YouTube and Facebook growing rapidly, a position paper by a Qaeda-affiliated institute discouraged media jihadists from overly “exuberant” efforts on behalf of the group for fear of diluting its message.

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The Glimpse Foundation is an organization that brings the experience of study abroad students the rest of the country and the world via an online community and a quarterly glossy magazine carried in major bookstore chains such at Barnes and Noble. The site,

Glimpse Abroad represents an online community of young adults devoted to cross-cultural learning and exchange. It features first person, cultural-experience pieces written by study abroad students, volunteers, international students and others living abroad. Relying on narrative story lines and rich sensory detail, these articles capture readers� attention and concern by making the world personal.

Glimpse Abroad currently contains a database of 380 articles from over 90 countries, and will soon offer interactive web capabilities--including forums, blogs, photo sharing and message-boards--to all registered users.

=> Read more!