Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar

by Neha Vora

Teach for Arabia offers an ethnographic account of the experiences of students, faculty, and administrators in Education City, Qatar. Education City, home to the branch campuses of six elite American universities, represents the Qatari government's multibillion dollar investment over the last two decades in growing a local knowledge-based economy. Though leaders have eagerly welcomed these institutions, not all citizens embrace the U.S. universities in their midst. Some critics see them as emblematic of a turn away from traditional values toward Westernization. Qatari students who attend these schools often feel stereotyped and segregated within their spaces. Neha Vora considers how American branch campuses influence notions of identity and citizenship among both citizen and non-citizen residents and contribute to national imaginings of the future and a transnational Qatar. Looking beyond the branch campus, she also confronts mythologies of liberal and illiberal peoples, places, and ideologies that have developed around these universities. Supporters and detractors alike of branch campuses have long ignored the imperial histories of American universities and the exclusions and inequalities that continue to animate daily academic life. From the vantage point of Qatar, Teach for Arabia challenges the assumed mantle of liberalism in Western institutions and illuminates how people can contribute to decolonized university life and knowledge production.

Genres: Middle East, Education, Anthropology

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Lafayette College . her works focus primarily on Citizenship and Belonging,Neoliberalism, South Asian diasporas, Gender and Ethnicity, States, Migration, Transnationalism, the Gulf Arab States, Feminist Theory, Globalized Higher Education, Indian Ocean Connectivities

Reviews

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books of 2018 - an AMAZING book!

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indeed excellent work.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished Neha Vora's _Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar_. So much of this study of American overseas campuses in the context of Qatarization resonated with my own lived experience in Dubai, Dammam, and Doha. Highly recommended for anyone involved with American higher education in the Arabian Gulf.

[Douglas MacLean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some fantastic insights into the stratified world of an overwhelmingly non-citizen society. The author is largely new to working outside her home country, so she is unable to situate what is unique and what is a shared feature to similar societies, e.g. Singapore, or to Westener-focused teaching programmes, like the JET programme in Japan.

The biggest issue with the work is that it is very heavy on anthropology jargon. The author is capable of writing more accessibly, as her anecdotes about interviewees attest, but she chooses to stick with her field's particular words when she goes into analysis. As someone trained in a different field, it made the work more difficult than it needed to be.

That's a shame really, because the work is definitely valuable reading for a range of audiences, including outside anthropology and even academia.