Iraq's students say, 'Welcome back, professor'

"[Expats] call and say, 'We want to help in the rebuilding,' " says Dr. Joseph Ghougassian, deputy adviser to the US-led Ministry of Higher Education. "They feel an emotional pull. They really want to come back and bring their own skills and American way of thinking."

Iraq's brain drain coincided with the rise of the Baath Party, with the first wave leaving immediately after the 1963 Baath Party coup d'état. Another wave left in the early 1970s as Hussein brutally muscled his way into power.

It was the Iran-Iraq War, however, that opened the floodgates. As the Baath Party recruitment began in earnest, the universities' goals shifted from centers of research and edification to promotion of Baath Party interest and Hussein's personal preferences.

Like most professors, Derwish never dreamed of leaving Iraq.

Derwish received his PhD in England in the 1960s, like many others among Iraq's burgeoning intellectual elite. He was so eager to return to Iraq that he went ahead of his wife and children, who were still tying up travel plans.

Trouble started for Derwish in the early 1980s. He was one of the 50 top professors forced to transfer out of the university by "presidential order" to a government ministry position as an adviser on the Iran-Iraq War.

"I resented greatly the way we were transferred," says Derwish. "I'm an independent-minded person who's worked hard to cultivate my faculties, and I was not prepared to be submissive to anyone's orders."

The academic environment deteriorated. Even as existing universities wilted, Hussein continued to build new ones. As one part of an education policy that befuddled many, Hussein ordered the construction of seven universities starting in 1988, including Kirkuk University, which he opened in January 2003 - three months before the war. As more buildings went up, less money went into them.

As a result of the war and UN sanctions, lab supplies dwindled, broken equipment could not be replaced, and printing presses ceased operation. Entire classrooms of science students would gather around one piece of equipment.

As salaries decreased throughout the 1990s, corruption entered university life. Professors blackmailed students, who in turn bribed professors.

For select professors and administrators who supported the Baath Party, salaries rose. But the majority of professors had to take second jobs as tutors or start small businesses.

Baghdad University design professor Al Atif Suhairy said his monthly salary fell from $2,000 in the 1980s to $50 in the 1990s. Mr. Suhairy, who has four children, eventually left to be a professor in Yemen.

"We received the same salary as the merchant on the street who sells melons," says Suhairy, who is now back in his teaching post at Baghdad University. "I had no money even for the wedding of my son, who was a doctor. This was the case for us all."

Like many, Derwish refused to join the Baath Party, and suffered for it.

In the mid-1980s, Derwish's daughter lost her scholarship because she wouldn't join the Baath Party. Mukhabarat agents and Baath Party officers began visiting Derwish at his home at night, just to "check up on him." Once they asked him for passport photos - he didn't know why.

In the early 1990s, professors were still allowed to take their summers abroad. Derwish went off to Jordan. He did not return.

For those left behind, academic life became unbearable.

Throughout the 1990s, as more professors fled, Hussein cracked down. He prohibited foreign travel and refused to issue certificates of graduation, documents needed to apply for jobs abroad. Still, many professors escaped by bribing people in the passport office.

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