ABSTRACT
The present volume is the distillation of two international conferences on education in the Arab world held by Georgetown University in 2006-2007, primarily in response to the completion of the first series of the United Nations Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) in 2005 (UNDP 2002-2005). Since highlighting the Arab world’s critical deficits in “knowledge, freedom, and women’s empowerment” in 2002, the AHDRs have annually pointed to the unequal standards of education in Arab countries as primary factors in their lagging development relative to the rest of the world. Specifically, the reports have identified the limited educational opportunities and deficiencies in the “acquisition, dissemination, production and utilization” of knowledge as the “major predicaments” confronting Arab societies in the twenty-first century. They have moreover warned against the adverse consequences of more restricted access for Arab and Muslim students to Western academies of learning in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. As noted by the authors of the AHDRs, these findings stand in stark contrast to the Arab world’s celebrated historical record in advancing human knowledge, and its “rich and time-tested intellectual tradition” in a broad range of scientific, philosophical, and socio-cultural disciplines.
