Month: March 2008

Unless you have been living in some sort of backwater or under a regime intolerant of diverse opinions, you no doubt have heard that Cal Poly is trying to put together a ‘deal’ with their new friends in Saudi Arabia. Here’s the deal:

Saudi Arabia is looking to mine the high-tech expertise of American universities. The country recently set its sights on Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which would set up an engineering program in Saudi Arabia. But the lucrative contract comes with a caveat: The Saudi university doesn’t allow women in its engineering courses. That doesn’t sit well with Cal Poly students, who circulated a petition demanding further discussion.

The world has also been listening, and they haven’t said “no”… they’ve said “HELL NO!” Here’s what others are saying!

LISTEN HERE to NPR !

3/13/08 — NPR’s Calif report that has a 5 minute segment (really good and wraps up with Stanford’s Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Dr. Charles Hill who collapses Provost Durgin’s propositions in the concluding analysis.

Minding the Campus– American Campuses in the Mid-East:not for everyone.

03/13/08 –“U.S. universities pride themselves on their tolerance – religious, ethnic, gender-based, sexual orientation-based, whatever. But when it comes to lucrative consulting fees for partnering with universities in Mideastern countries where none of the above categories of toleration seems to exist, the campus open-mindedness apparently evaporates, and a strange variety of mulitculturalism takes over.”

Other print media has also been very explicit on their objections to the deal:

Bill Morem’s “the Devil is in the Details!” Don’t forget to check out all the comments.. locals are not happy, either!

Los Angeles Times

Inside Higher Education

United Press international

Fresno Bee “stirring passions in treatment of women”

Cal Poly College Republicans

MSNBC “women get the cold shoulder”

Karin’s Blog at the L.A.Times

… uncoveredslo.com the folks who first broke the deal on the news locally!

Cal Poly students Recent Protest at the Impromtu Senate Meeting with Warren Baker

CLICK Here for PICTURES

News From England on the Saudis. CLICK Do we really want to be them?

The only question remains: where do you stand?

Roger Freberg

PS. Want more fun? Check out what you local campus folks make as a ‘base salary’ !
for example: Dean Mohammad Noori $ 213,036.00

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

For those of you who have been following the struggle between Cal Poly Administration’s support for that struggling democracy and beacon of human rights paradise named Saudi Arabia must be scratching your heads and wondering:

If this is so good… what is the big secret? Why has the administration of Cal Poly worked so hard to silence critics and continued to press on with what is so clearly a bad deal?

Most of us who have followed Cal Poly’s Administration over the tenure of the aging President Warren Baker realize that there must be a ‘buck’ or a promise of more bucks to come. After all, the ‘Cal Poly Foundation’ was set up to handle all those things that public universities are not allowed to do… like compete with the private sector. And as everyone knows who has had any dealings with the Foundation will attest… they are not in it to make a better world, they are in it for the buck! Just check out what they charge in their stores and how they treat ‘competition.’

In any event, what could be called the “Emperor Strikes Back!” is a thinly disguised article in the student newspaper extolling the Saudi Deal, underplaying the discriminatory hiring practices and criticizing everyone who disagrees as ignorant, unwashed and in dire need of some Old Spice ( Okay, i exaggerated )

Here’s the link to the article!

Now, the title of the article stresses how Saudi Arabia NEEDS Americas help in improving their educational system. It sounds so ‘altruistic’ to help… but that’s not the Cal Poly Administration’s way. Here in a nutshell is the administration’s basic argument for doing the deal:

1) “… merely attempting to better understand the region and culture.” “I think Saudi Arabia is a country in transition. In the years I have been going there, its become more liberalized.”

Oh please, Saudi Arabia hasn’t changed fundamentally in a thousand years. It’s dishonest of the administration to play the altruism card. Besides, academic studies have shown that being exposed to our western ways doesn’t automatically make folks want to emulate us. Some people — unfortunately — are just as happy living under a dictatorship.
2) We should not apply a “litmus test about what countries…”

Well, we do this all the time and with generally favorable results. This helped to end apartheid in South Africa, for example.

3) “many universities have signed on”

We really don’t know what the deals were, but what we do know is that many more have refused. As a ‘public institution’, Cal Poly’s mandate is to educate Californians and not spend an estimated 1/3 of the department head’s time with the Saudis.

4) “If one is Jewish-American or Christian-American and one is discreet, one should be fine, It’s the same with homosexuality.”

I still don’t know how one could be discrete about being ‘female’? Also, I found the use of the term “Christian-American” to be rather strange.
Finally, the fellow interviewed in the article John Battenberg comes from the English Department at Cal Poly. This department – by the way – is no stranger to being taken to Federal Court on issues of discrimination.

The local media is a communities best hope in addressing big local issues and our local print, radio and television have got the message out… and I for one am very appreciative.

Here’s BILL MOREM’S column in today’s Tribune

The more we hear about the ‘deal’ the more people don’t like it.

Roger Freberg

PS. The picture above so annoys the administration that I have to run it again

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