Iraq's tensions spill onto campus

Professor Mohammed says he was never fond of Baathist apparatchiks either, but the campus was always safe under the old regime. "I can't remember dangerous incidents at that time," he says. "There were strong rules, and no demonstrations."

According to some professors and students, Sarhan's overtly sectarian style of activism was a slap in the face to all Sunnis at the university, Baathist or otherwise. In the new Iraq, one man's religious devotion can be another man's insult.

Pharmacy dean Mustafa Hitti, who is blamed by the Shiite students who rioted after Sarhan's death, fled from the campus during the rioting, with Shiite students alleging they had seen Hitti's bodyguards in an argument with Sarhan just before his murder. The dean, a Sunni, had asked the students not to hold a political gathering on campus, but Sarhan insisted on their "right to free expression," students say.

When the campus reopened several days later, some staff members still stayed away, complaining about the lack of adequate security. Several department heads "still refused to be on campus because they are afraid of some of students," Mohammed says.

An ideological shift is visible in the university's curriculum. While science courses are practically unchanged, humanities colleges have deleted "some subjects dealing with the former regime," Professor Mussawi says. Baathist studies seminars have given way to "new courses dealing with human rights, democracy, and globalization," he says.

Even science textbooks used to sometimes include sentences praising Saddam and the Baath Party. Students say their professors now tell them to tear these pages out.

Ali al-Adib, a member of parliament from the Shiite-led majority bloc, says new textbooks are on the way. He blamed the former regime for "creating ethnic divisions" and said that most of today's university administrators are "still infused with "Baathist culture."

Mr. Adib, who sits on a newly formed parliamentary committee for higher education, says he is confident that Iraqi education can once again be the best in the region. First, however, university curricula must be revised to reflect a "federal, democratic vision of Iraq," he says.

Over the next few months, as Iraq's politicians come to grips with drafting a permanent constitution, the definition of federalism is sure to be hotly debated. For some Shiite parties in the new government, "democratic federalism" is an old slogan that also means following Islamic law.

A Western adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education says that the most important step is to overcome the terrorist threat, which drains almost every kind of "productive investment" in Iraq. "If the country regained a sense of peace and normalcy, the fact that it would be a democracy would help it to regain stature in higher education," he says. "If there was no terrorism, the sky would be the limit."

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