The founder of the Alexandria Trust, a London-based charity, Mr. Khalil wants to “restore the excellence in learning and culture in the Arab region” by starting an online publication devoted to covering higher education. Al Fanar — Arabic for The Lighthouse— will be formally introduced March 3 in Dubai.
“Universities are really one of the fundamental building blocks of society, but in many Arab countries, they are weak building blocks,” he said in an interview at the trust’s office.
“We want Al Fanar to be a place where universities in the region can connect. We also want to nurture a generation of Arab journalists with a serious interest in writing about education,” said Mr. Khalil, who graduated from the University of South Carolina before returning to Egypt to run his family’s chemical business.
Besides offering “a light in the middle of a blackout,” Mr. Khalil hopes the publication will inspire a generation of Arab philanthropists to support education. “I haven’t seen anyone in the Arab world who woke up in the morning and said, ‘I’m going to give away 90 percent of my money.’ We don’t have a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett,” he said.
The publication’s new editor will be David Wheeler, a 25-year veteran of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a U.S. publication on which Al Fanar will be based. In a region where much of the press is government sponsored, and where censorship is the norm rather than the exception, Mr. Wheeler promises that Al Fanar will be “a thoughtful critic, not a cheerleader.”
“We’re not going to hold back. We’re not going to self-censor,” he said in the interview. “Ideas get sharper when you debate them, and I want Al Fanar to be a place where people can exchange strong opinions.”
Basing the Alexandria Foundation in London is one way of protecting Al Fanar from government pressure, he said. But editorial contributions will come from throughout the 22 member states represented in the Arab League, with a strong preference for on-the-ground reporting. Although the site will aggregate and summarize articles from both the English- and Arabic-language news media, most of the content will be original articles that will be published in both English and Arabic.
“It’s important to underline that this is an Arab-founded, Arab-funded project,” Mr. Wheeler said. “My boss is an Egyptian, not a well-meaning American.”
Rasha Faek, a Syrian journalist based in Amman, is serving as senior editor responsible for all Arabic-language content.
“I was originally hired to write a study of coverage of education in the Arab world,” she said by Skype. “What really surprised me is that if you looked at most of the stories, they weren’t really about education at all. Instead, they were about students killed during protests or teachers on strike or exams postponed due to fighting. There was nothing about academic life, nothing about educational reforms and nothing about teaching.”
“Every year, thousands of students graduate from Arab universities and find there are no jobs,” Ms. Faek said. “We need to be writing about that, and about the big gap between what the universities teach and what the market needs. We also hope to be a watchdog for academic freedom throughout the region.”
One indication of the challenges they face is the difficulty in finding a regional base of operations.
Mr. Wheeler had originally hoped to edit the magazine from Beirut, but a rise in sectarian violence in Lebanon prompted him to reconsider. “Then we were going to be based in Cairo, and then Jordan. It seemed like every time we decide on a country, something explodes and we have to move on,” he said. At the moment, he remains in London.
“We’ve had to become an organization that lives virtually — using Skype, Drop Box and the Web,” he said. “It keeps our costs low. It also turns out to be much cheaper and easier to travel in the region from London.”
Al Fanar aims to become completely self-sustaining in three to five years, with income coming from a combination of advertising and sponsored events. “But we’re hoping it will be more than just a trade magazine for professors. We want to be a place where ideas can be explored,” Mr. Wheeler said.
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