February 1, 2006
On Education
2 Universities Trade Ideas Across
Armed Checkpoints
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
WALTHAM, Mass.
IN the damp chill of a Jerusalem winter three years ago, Jehuda Reinharz
returned to Israel, his native land, in his present guise as president of
Brandeis University here. From his hotel on the western, Jewish, side of
the contested city, he telephoned a peer in the Arab neighborhoods to the
east, Sari Nusseibeh, president of the Palestinian university, Al Quds.
When Dr. Nusseibeh arrived at the hotel later that day, he took with him
two armed bodyguards, protection he needed, in part, from Palestinian
militants who had long viewed his peacemaking efforts as treason. Dr.
Reinharz had to intervene personally to persuade the hotel's security
officers to admit Arabs with weapons. The two university presidents
eventually sat down, the very picture of civilized discourse, as the Israeli
and Palestinian guards stood by with guns bristling.
Dr. Reinharz and Dr. Nusseibeh did not talk of negotiations and borders
that day. Both had been through many conferences and retreats devoted to
fostering a climate for peaceful resolution, and those optimistic efforts of
the Oslo period had been blasted to pieces by the intifada and the Israeli
reoccupation of West Bank cities. So they talked instead about what
university presidents talk about — student registration, faculty evaluation,
fund-raising, information technology.
By conversation's end, they had begun to create an exchange program for
faculty members and administrators at the two universities. In this
academic year, the initiative has brought Dr. Nusseibeh's vice president for
finance and administrative affairs, Imad Abu-Kishek, to Brandeis as a
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senior management fellow. There he has spent his days delving into the
intricacies of departmental budgeting, employee benefits packages and the
like, as well as taking graduate courses in strategic management,
leadership and organizational behavior.
Later this spring, a delegation of Al Quds middle managers from areas like
human resources and accounting will visit Brandeis for a week. The
program has received nearly $700,000 in two grants from the Ford
Foundation.
Officially, Mr. Abu-Kishek's role is to develop his university's
"administrative capacity." Practically, the result of his residency here might
be called peacemaking by indirection, a version of coexistence training so
ordinary it is audacious.
"The two approaches are not mutually exclusive," Dr. Nusseibeh said in a
telephone interview from his office in Jerusalem. "When you speak
professionally, you will find many layers of possible agreement. If you
bring people together to discuss microbiology or math or public health, as
a byproduct you are addressing the surrounding issues."
Over lunch in Brandeis's faculty club last week, Dr. Reinharz expressed a
similar lack of sentimentality. "My aim is not to change the world because
I know I cannot change it," he said. "We want to provide a nonpolitical,
nonconference, nondemonstrative way to make an impact."
IN certain respects, the two universities are surprisingly comparable. Both
were created in the recent past, Brandeis in 1948 and Al Quds through the
merger of four smaller colleges in 1995. The enrollments stand close, 4,000
at Brandeis and 6,000 at Al Quds. Each institution serves as an emblem of
communal identity and aspiration, Brandeis for American Jews, Al Quds
for Palestinians.
Which, of course, goes right to the utter improbability of this partnership.
Of necessity, Al Quds has perfected the art of crisis management. Between
1995 and 2000, as the Palestinian Authority served as the funnel for
financial support to Al Quds from the European Union, faculty members
and administrators sometimes went months without being paid. When
Israel largely closed its borders to Palestinians during the second intifada
to try to halt terrorist attacks, many Al Quds students could not afford
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tuition because they or their parents were barred from traveling to jobs
inside Israel. Only a bail-out package by the Arab Bank in Saudi Arabia
saved the university from closing altogether.
The separation barrier being constructed now between Israel and the West
Bank will ultimately leave Al Quds campuses in Ramallah and Abu Dis
on one side and the East Jerusalem campus and administrative
headquarters on the other. Mr. Abu-Kishek's daily commuting from his
home in Ramallah to his office in Abu Dis takes him through the Kalandia
checkpoint, which might process him in as little as 15 minutes or take as
long as two hours. Dr. Nusseibeh, while facing death threats from
Palestinian militants, has also been detained by Israeli authorities for two
brief periods in the past 15 years.
Amid all the turmoil, from both without and within Palestinian society, Al
Quds has managed to more than triple its enrollment since its founding
and to cobble together an annual budget of $20 million. Its programs in
computer science, engineering, public health and nursing are considered
particularly substantial.
Still, it has no dormitories, no student center, no full-time fund-raiser and
virtually no endowment. Fully 60 percent of its annual budget goes straight
into salaries for the faculty and staff. In contrast, Brandeis has an
endowment of $570 million and an annual budget of $263 million, only
one-third of which flows into salaries and benefits.
"When you build something in a hurry, you need to fix it," said Mr. AbuKishek, 40, who has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a
master's in political science. "We have no organization in the modern way.
We depend on the relationships of the president. We try to find out who
has connections where. Now we need a better strategy to solve our
financial problem."
With an engineer's appreciation of detail, Mr. Abu-Kishek has been
studying the way Brandeis allows each department to devise its own
budget; how it handles both salaries and benefits as part of human
resources; lumps together functions from registration to social activities
under one student-affairs office; and has merged its library and
information-technology operations. None of this may sound especially
sexy, but these are the organ systems of a university, the throb of life
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beneath the epidermis.
The influence, though, runs both ways. Several groups of Brandeis faculty
members and administrators have visited Al Quds, coming away especially
impressed with the university's "web of relationships in the community, its
role in civil society," as Daniel Terris, a professor who helps lead the
exchange program, put it.
After Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections last week, the degree of
civility in Palestinian society, particularly regarding contacts with Israeli
and American Jews, will surely be tested. Having received steady criticism
for the collaboration with Brandeis since it began, Dr. Nusseibeh predicted
that "the pressure will be building" under a government led by a group
sworn to Israel's destruction.
"It wasn't optimism that made us kick this off," Dr. Nusseibeh said. "It was
an act of faith in building the future. That commitment has remained
through difficult periods before. If we'd worked only as optimists, we
would've given up."
E-mail: sgfreedman@nytimes.com
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