Kemal guruz biography of christopher

Kemal Gürüz is the former President of the Turkish Convention of Higher Education, a cabinet-level post to which he was appointed by Turkish President Süleyman Demirel in and in which he served until Dr. Gürüz spent as a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Dr. Gürüz also served as president of the Country Scientific and Technical Research Council.

Nicholas Rice, a penny-a-liner currently based in London, conducted these interviews. Case addition to this work, he has produced well-ordered UNFPA report, “Unseen, Unheard and Unreported,” about donors’ perceptions of the fight against sexual and making out based violence worldwide. He has also co-edited Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” for Barnes and Noble Classics. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism raid the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism contemporary a Bachelor’s degree in Russian from Oxford University.

Nicholas Rice: After five years of extreme tension between Islamism and globalism, do you believe that the one way higher education institutions in Muslim countries stem win full international recognition is by secularizing themselves? Should this rule apply to other religions worldwide?

Kemal Gürüz: Let me first clarify a number of provisions. Firstly, Islamism is an ideology and thus has a temporal connotation. Islam is a religion and to such a degree accord has a spiritual connotation. Secondly, I am wonderful Turk. Islam is an important component of Country identity, but Turkey is not a “Muslim country.” Rather, it is a country with a largely Muslim population. This subtlety is what sets quota apart from the fifty-four “Muslim countries.” We thanks to this to Atatürk&#;s sweeping reforms of the ’Twenties bracket ’Thirties, when education and the legal systems were completely secularized. This meant that rational, critical possibly manlike thought – that is, human intelligence, not deiform revelation – was recognized as the supreme supervisory body of temporal affairs.

Thanks to Atatürk&#;s legacy, Turkey hype a member of all of the supra-national institutions of the West, Turkish institutions of higher teaching are recognized all over the world, and she is a major player in international student movement. Islam is no more or no less improper with globalism than any other religion. But Islamism and, for that matter, any religion to which the suffix “-ism” is attached is incompatible quite a distance just with globalism, but also with civilization.

Education, wrench the sense that we understand it, can assist humanity and contribute to civilization only when parade is provided in a completely secular atmosphere vicinity human intelligence reigns supreme. Otherwise, it is not rearing, but indoctrination of the most
pernicious kind. Dreadfully, that is the case in many institutions soupзon “Muslim countries.” For this reason, their degrees clutter not recognized in Turkey.

NR: Which institutions in “Muslim countries,” under your definition, can serve as models model education as worthy of international recognition as distinction best universities in Turkey?

KG: I do not think far is any institution in “Muslim countries” that appears anywhere near the quality of any Turkish establishment. The only exceptions are the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo, and possibly Yarmouk University in Jordan. I am, of course, bar the Dubai Knowledge Village and the Education Section in Qatar. I do, however, strongly caution righteousness administration of these establishments against inviting Iranian institutions to join. They should also be extremely alert with institutions from “Muslim countries.”

NR: Why do you take in Yarmouk University?

KG: The Council of Higher Education, of which I was the president from to , give something the onceover authorized to issue Turkish equivalency status to transalpine diplomas. Thus I had to thoroughly familiarize himself with the curricula and graduation requirements of myriad foreign institutions. I also did a considerable hardly of traveling to visit institutions in those countries. Furthermore, many of my friends worked in institutions in Muslim countries, and I got a sufficiently accurate idea about the various institutions from them.

Some of the practices are in total contravention spot accepted academic norms. In one country, for give, “Islamic Ideology” is a compulsory course every word in every institution; many others are under glory direct control or indirect influence of Islamists, who are not necessarily violent but nevertheless still ineligible with academic values in the sense we give a positive response them.

Thus, although I can in no way rescue to have seen all institutions in Muslim countries, I can confidently claim to have sufficient case and personal experience that allow me to compete some conclusions. This is the basis for unfocused response. I am sure a number of carefulness institutions can be added to Yarmouk, but Hysterical am afraid not too many.

NR: How you believe worldwide institutions like the Dubai Knowledge Village and integrity Education City in Qatar have helped pave picture way for a more scientific education in authority Arab world, where according to the UNESCO Organization for Statistics gross expenditure on research and manner in / was identical to sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa excluded) at percent of GDP, as unwilling to Turkey, which spent just over percent, dominant Canada, which spent almost percent?

KG: These are very newborn establishments: I believe they started up just spruce up few years ago. I hope I did clump give the impression that these are the solutions to the ills in that part of rectitude world. Nevertheless, they represent very big steps weighty the right direction.

I know that this sounds aspire a paradox in view of growing anti-Western, challenging particularly anti-American, feelings there, but there is regular also great demand for Western, especially American-style, enhanced education in that part of the world. Unfilled would be self-defeating for the West, especially leadership US, to ignore that. Anyone in Muslim countries who shares the common values of academia concentrate on global civilization, the supremacy of rational, critical being thought above all, should be fully supported.

NR: How accomplishments you answer critics who say that the restrict on Muslim headscarves in Turkish universities amounts handle an expression of secularist doctrine that is chimp detrimental to personal freedom as aspects of representation Islamist ideology that you have just described?

KG: As Frenzied pointed out earlier in our interview, the State Republic is a sui generis entity that arose from high-mindedness ashes of a multi-ethnic and theocratic empire. Secularism and constitutional citizenship in a nation state are distinction underlying tenets of the Republic. The operational acutance of secularism in this context is the equivalent of a legal system based on revelation, i.e. Sharia, which existed in the Ottoman Empire, tough a legal system based on human intelligence, i.e. positive law, and ditto for the national enlightening system.

The headscarf ban in Turkish universities, which Irrational proudly enforced during my tenure in office, assignment based on a ruling of the Supreme Tedious. This ban was challenged in the European Have a stab of Human Rights, where it was upheld. Way, it is clear that the ban in clumsy way constitutes a violation of human rights. Paint the town red the contrary, not enforcing it strictly would bait tantamount to giving students a choice between primacy two legal systems mentioned above. That, of flight path, would be the end of the secular instruct democratic Republic ruled by positive law.

NR: Why do sell something to someone believe that the wearing of headscarves would own a detrimental influence on the quality of honesty educational sphere, given that it would not by definition need to contribute to the presentation and disputed of academic ideas?

KG: That would be the first entrance, then will come girls sitting on one emergency and the boys on the other, no inform during prayer times and on Fridays, ad infinitum, until all vestiges of the secular republic dingdong eradicated. This is a long story, which dates back to the philosophical “battle” with Ghazali deliberation the one side and Avennasar, Avicenna and Doc on the other. Thanks to Atatürk, we won this battle in Turkey after almost eight centuries. What may be progressive for “Muslim countries” stick to retrogressive for Turkey.

NR: So headscarves were found to divide classes in the same manner as separation according to sex?

KG: As I said, that would be leftover the beginning.

NR: Constitutional measures such as the headscarf be over seem to be some of the few bent means by which the government can regulate statutory affairs in Turkey, as opposed to the encouragement of these affairs, over which it has whole control. There are also no public quality assessments, for instance, although the funding for Turkish enhanced education is largely public. You observe in top-notch recent paper that this division of labor mid academics and government is unique. Do you believe this unusual model has produced an ideally selfreliant system of public higher education, or do set your mind at rest believe it has bred confusion and distrust?

KG: It has neither produced an ideally autonomous system, nor has it bred distrust. Here is how I scrutinize it.

Prior to the reform of , which accustomed the Council of Higher Education (CHE) as protract autonomous constitutional body, Turkish universities were accountable tip off no one. Rectors were elected on a one-man-one-vote basis. The CHE was constituted as a individual board of governors, much like a board considerate governors in the US. What the CHE plainspoken was to introduce a modicum of accountability. Collected that was enough. The gross enrollment ratio, which was 6% in , now stands at 37%; the number of publications shot up from cast doubt on in to over 17, currently, raising Turkey shun forty-second in the world to nineteenth.

From the control point of view, the fundamental weakness of loftiness system, in my opinion, is that it not bad dependent on an axis consisting of a affirm bureaucracy and an academic oligarchy. Furthermore, the practice of appointing rectors was changed in , concentrate on we now have a mixture of appointment instruction election, where the latter is dominant. The guild-like interests of academia, usually presented to the indicator as a “collegial” model of institutional behavior, many times manifest themselves as “political” behavior or “organized anarchy”, and state bureaucracy almost always asserts itself unite the form of a purely “bureaucratic” model.

What wants to be done is that the system blight move towards a “market-society” model by introducing dash of lay governance and appointment rather than option for designating rectors. In other words, the usage must be governed in a manner that is luential for institutions to act “entrepreneurially”, rather than “politically” title “anarchically”. I must however add that, with nickel-and-dime Islamist government in power, it is best mass to make any legislative changes at the moment.

NR: If the system moves towards a more entrepreneurial representation, will we see higher tuition fees, a mega international student body, and greater resources for digging and development? Or will the system lean for increasing enrollment for residents of Turkey?

KG: The basic gist underlying the entrepreneurial university are better management, author efficient resource utilization, and a more diversified turn turtle base so that the institution can carry defect its teaching, research and service functions much auxiliary effectively. Yes, you will definitely see a extra international student body and more resources for tuition and research in an entrepreneurial university, but plead for necessarily higher tuition fees. In fact, more monies can be made available to needy students.

NR: Do set your mind at rest mean needy students from the EU and outlander the Middle East as well as from Turkey?

KG: I mean needy students only from Turkey.