School’s Saudi venture crosses the line

Algonquin College’s all-male move draws its share of critics

Professor Jack Wilson has written for his union newsletter for 20 years. But never have any of his submissions spurred such response as a recent editorial questioning a decision by Algonquin College to open an all-male campus this fall in Jazan, Saudi Arabia.

“This topic has got incredible response,” says Wilson, vice-president of OPSEU 415, the union that represents Algonquin’s faculty. “Faculty, support staff, even some managers have told me they’re ‘uneasy.’ ” And no wonder. Saudi Arabia has an appalling record of humanrights abuses. Amnesty International recently reported the country’s “authorities severely restricted freedoms of expression, association and assembly ... Women were discriminated against in law and practice and inadequately protected against domestic and other violence ... Hundreds of people were on death row at the end of the year; at least 70 were executed.” It’s possibly the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

The Economist ranked Saudi Arabia 163rd out of 167 on its latest Democracy Index, just ahead of Syria and North Korea.

This hardly sounds like a regime that a publicly funded Canadian college should support.

And yet, Algonquin finds itself doing just that.

Saudi Arabia is pouring buckets of money into educational programs for both men and women in order to fill a massive skills gap in a country where many jobs are filled by foreigners.

Algonquin has consulted on educational issues with Saudi Arabia for some time, but earlier this year, the college ramped it up: it bid on proposals to actually run both a male-only college in Jazan and a female-only college in Al-Kharj. The school only won the contract for the male college.

Algonquin is currently offering English as a second language, as well as two technician diploma programs at its Jazan campus, says Claude Brulé, Algonquin’s vicepresident, academic. The college has plans to add a more technical and business programs over the next couple of years.

Brulé says he understands the uneasiness, but points out that Saudi Arabia is currently looking to launch 19 male colleges and 18 for women, a signal that the country is interested in educating both sexes.

That’s laudable on one level: education and skills training can certainly improve the prosperity of individuals and entire communities. That’s not negligible.

Niagara College, for example, has a program where women instructors have been teaching female students in the “Medical Secretary Program” at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh since 2006, helping women retain skilled employment.

And there’s no doubt that some powerful personal connections are made through these types of exchanges.

Yet, it’s unlikely that Algonquin’s program will do anything to open up the oppressive political system in that country. China is a prime example of increased economic prosperity not translating into increased personal freedoms.

“I don’t doubt the intentions of the faculty that’s interested in teaching abroad,” says Wilson. “But as we plan to teach purely technical courses, as far as I can tell, we’re just perpetuating an oppressive system.”

And speaking of faculty, a number of Algonquin’s own instructors — think women, or openly gay professors — will be prohibited from working at their own college’s newest campus, where women can’t teach men and homosexuality is punishable by death.

Exporting our educational expertise is a worthwhile goal. And certainly, for colleges feeling the financial crunch, it’s a valid way to boost the bottom line.

But, unlike private companies, surely our publicly funded post-secondary institutions have some obligation to represent the values of this country when they operate abroad. That is not possible in a country like Saudi Arabia.

In fact, Algonquin seems to have ignored at least some of its own published guidelines on how to “determine the suitability” of a foreign campus. The first of a five-point list asks whether the “opportunity” fits with the college’s parameters for “local customs and practices.” Given what we know about Saudi Arabia, its customs and practices do not remotely match Algonquin’s.

Try this thought experiment: if a Canadian college opened a foreign campus that white students were allowed to attend, but not black students — who also weren’t allowed to vote — would we be assuaged by the fact that those black students got their own, separate campus? No, we likely would be outraged. Why, then, are we willing to look the other way when one of our local, publicly funded, schools starts up in a country that discriminates against women (among others)?

Algonquin is under the microscope because the human-rights violations in Saudi Arabia are extreme. But many colleges are operating in countries that have policies and practices we don’t support. Should schools pull out of all those places? Of course not.

It’s admittedly difficult to know where to draw the line, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Saudi Arabia isn’t on the wrong side of it.