Dive Summary:
- Speakers at the Reinventing Higher Education conference in Madrid last week said the key to prosperity for universities in the Arab spring nations is a revival of liberal arts education.
- According to Cardiff University professorial fellow Mahmoud Ezzamel, this renewed focus on liberal arts fields like arts, humanities and the social sciences should not be geared toward mimicking or importing different styles of education from the West, but rather based on the teachings of the medieval Islamic scholars who paved the way for the Enlightenment.
- He adds that the promotion of liberal Islam through Arab higher education would combat the idea that liberalism and humanism had disappeared from the Arab world.
From the article:
Universities in Arab Spring countries need to revive a once-great tradition of liberal arts education if they are to prosper, according to speakers at an international conference. Mahmoud Ezzamel, professorial fellow at Cardiff University, told an audience at the Reinventing Higher Education conference in Madrid last week that universities in Muslim countries should focus on arts, humanities and the social sciences rather than concentrating solely on science and engineering. ...