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Other lead articles →Report from the Annual Meeting of the League for Academic Cooperation in the Gulf
This Year’s Resolutions: The annual settlement of academic spheres of influence across GCC universities reaffirmed Greek predominance in Medicine, Egyptian control of Engineering, Jordanian primacy in Law and the Pakistani sphere in Computing. The United States again received no faculty but retained its special mandate to explain the Gulf to everybody else. Delegates also settled emerging border disputes, approved the voluntary mobility of scholars found on the wrong side of disciplinary frontiers, and reaffirmed their commitment to open international competition within the agreed spheres.
By Abdulrahman van der Merwe, Gulf Affairs Editor (Connecticut)
The Law delegation arrived first, shortly after four. Professor Fawzi al-Mashaqbeh al-Zarqani entered the Grand Continental through a side entrance accompanied by two professors, an associate dean and a young lecturer carrying a leather folder who appeared to have been instructed not to speak.
Al-Mashaqbeh chaired the Hashemite Association for the Advancement of Legal Education Abroad and served as Secretary-General of the League for Academic Cooperation in the Gulf, although inside the hotel neither title was especially necessary. The letterhead called it cooperation. Delegates called it the League. Everyone understood that it existed to manage the spheres of influence through which the Families had divided much of academic life across GCC universities.