University architecture and academic freedom in the Middle East: a case study of Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Middle Eastern countries do not score well on academic freedom. Promoting and protecting academic freedom concerns, among other things, the exercise by academic staff and students of their right to freedom of peaceful assembly. This human right is not restricted solely by police behaviour or related suppression of protests in academic environments. One of the means of restricting this right is the architecture of university campuses as designed in such a way that allows to form or hold effective assemblies. This policy brief examines the situation of Al-Azhar University and shows how the change of the university campus from the city centre of Cairo to a newly built city called Nasr in the 1960s, as well as new changes in architecture, especially after the protests of 2010 and 2011, have limited the access to university public spaces, its inclusiveness and the scope of actions such as walking on campus, ultimately creating tools of repression that have made the exercise by academic staff and students of their right to assembly and protest in connection to their academic freedom impossible. The policy brief also considers four scenarios (ie, University of California; Federal University of Santa Catarina; American University in Cairo; and Middle East Technical University) that have pursued positive practices facilitating students’ right to peaceful assembly and protest, which can in turn promote and protect their academic freedom. Policy recommendations to different stakeholders are therefore provided from a rights-based perspective.