| It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it | And in those places were formed the traditions and the curricula of legal, theological as well as secular learning -- the so-called studia adabiya -- from which European humanists derived many of their ideas not only about learning itself, but also about the environment of learning where disputation, dissent and argument were the order of the day |
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| Topped with almonds, pistachio, roasted coconuts and raisins | In Palestine, Bir Zeit and Al-Najah, for instance, have resisted Israeli occupation and preserved Palestinian identity admirably |
Most of all, and most unlike the Sultan who must guard only one place and defend its frontiers, the traveller crosses over, traverses territory, abandons fixed positions, all the time.
19| The world we live in is made up of numerous identities, numerous ideas, lives, philosophies interacting, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes antithetically | Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like |
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| Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business | Political repression has never been good for academic freedom and, perhaps more importantly, it has been disastrous for academic and intellectual excellence when such things as book banning and censorship are practised |
The idea is that academies form the mind of the young, just as -- to look at things from the point of view of the teacher -- to teach is to be engaged in a vocation having principally to do not with financial gain but with the unending search for truth.
| But, most essentially, in this joint discovery of self and other, it is the role of the academy to transform what might be conflict, or contest, or assertion into reconciliation, mutuality, recognition, creative interaction | The point I want to make is that as we consider these situational or contextual matters, the search for academic freedom becomes more important, more urgent, more requiring of careful and reflective analysis |
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| So let us agree then that whether we look to the time of Ibn Arabi or that of John Dewey we will find serious thinkers suggesting more or less the same thing, that the place of education is a special province within the society, a place where freedom of inquiry and thought occur and are protected and where -- it must be said -- the social and political context plays an important role by defining the limits and expectations of the learning process | Yet the status of university or school as well as what goes along with them intellectually as well as socially is special, is different from other sites in society like the government bureaucracy, the workplace, or the home |
Elsewhere, the Arab world which had been dominated either by Ottoman or by European colonialism, became independent after World War II.
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