Monday, 15 March 2021, 4:12 pm
Forget the global university rankings of any
list. The global university promotion exercise is filled
with snake oil and perfumed refuse, an effort to corrupt the
unknowing and steal from the gullible. The aim here is to
convince parents, potential students and academics that
their institutions of white collar crime are appealing
enough to warrant enrolment and employment at.
Writing
in 2019, Ellen Hazelkorn, who has had an eye on the rankings
system for some years, observed
that 18,000 university-level institutions could be found
across the globe. “Those ranked within the top 500 would
be within the top 3% worldwide. Yet, by a perverse logic,
New threats to academic freedom emerge from pandemic
New threats to academic freedom globally have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to physically distanced teaching, learning and examinations and virtual offerings or remote collaborations online, according to just-published global data and analysis.
Most notable among these are increased opportunities for surveillance of research, teaching and discourse, as well as sanctions, restrictions, self-censorship and isolation, data from the Academic Freedom Index 2020, published on 11 March, shows.
“While this is especially true in repressive countries, online harassment can be experienced anywhere. Even if the coming year will see us emerge from the depths of the pandemic, states, higher education leaders and institutions, funders and advocates alike must remain alert to and guard against an entrenching of such threats to academic inquiry and expression, be they new or old,” say the authors of
“There is still a lack of in-depth knowledge and understanding about the culture of emerging donors towards giving,” according to the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), which is currently researching the universality of humanitarian donorship.
Part of the reluctance on the part of Muslim organizations to broadcast their actions comes from a culture that sees charity as something private and humble - that should not be paraded in front of everyone for recognition.
“We do things without saying that we’re doing it. It is part of Islamic culture,” said Naeema Hassan al-Gasseer, a native of Bahrain and assistant regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Eastern Mediterranean.