Reconstruction: An American University; A bastion of U.S.-style higher learning arises in Kurdistan. The hope is that it will be fully Iraqi.

Byline: Malak Hamwi

Iraqi higher education has been on a downward trajectory for decades due to war, dictatorship and isolation. But now the American University of Iraq, soon to rise in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, hopes to reverse the decline. The university, AUI-S for short, is the brainchild of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, who long dreamed of setting up a university in his hometown once Iraq was free.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, he put his plan into action. Why name the school American University? Because, he says, Iraqis are grateful to the United States for liberating them--nowhere more so than in Kurdistan. Besides, he adds, "American education is among the best products the U.S. can offer."

Perhaps. But Iraq's American University will be a largely homegrown effort. The local Sulaymaniyah government donated the land for the project--some 162 hectares, with room for a future golf course--and Salih has managed to raise $15.2 million in start-up capital from private donors. Construction won't begin until next March and will take about a year and a half to complete. Meanwhile, the first students will start classes in January in rented offices not far from the future campus.

They'll begin with intensive English to prepare for regular university courses, which will all be taught in English as in the other five American Universities around the world, including three in the Arab world: Cairo, Beirut and Sharjah (U.A.E.). "It's not just Dick-and-Jane, let's-learn-how-to-order-in-restaurant English," says John Agresto, a former U.S adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and the only non-Iraqi member of the college's board of trustees. Language lessons will be supplemented by Western philosophical and political teachings, including the Federalist Papers and other founding documents of American ...