NISA protest letter to Iraqi Parliament over political interference in universities

The letter below was sent in Arabic on 4 February 2021; this is the network's English rendering. The original is available as a PDF.

4 February 2021

To the Honourable Speaker of the Council of Representatives \ Honourable Members of Parliament

Subject: Letter of protest

With respect,

It saddens us to submit, through this letter, our protest against the clear interference in the affairs of higher education, the attempts to pressure universities, and everything that damages academic freedom and the independence of academic and scientific decision-making. Your recent decisions and positions have provoked the astonishment and opposition of the Iraqi and international academic community — beginning with the ill-reputed Degree Equivalency Act, continuing with the parliamentary Higher Education Committee's threat to abolish the Academicians' Syndicate law, and most recently the Committee's demand to halt a master's thesis already defended at the University of Mosul, to suspend the granting of the degree, and to summon the President of the University of Mosul and several professors who supervised the thesis. This constituted a flagrant challenge to the freedom of scientific research and to academic freedoms, and was described in university circles as "a scandal by every measure" and an attempt to turn the thesis into a matter of sectarian strife among Iraq's communities.

We in the Network of Iraqi Scientists Abroad do not consider it within the authority of the parliamentary Higher Education Committee to halt the thesis acceptance procedures in the first place, nor within its authority to investigate the professors named in its official letter at all.

We express our deep concern at parliamentarians' interference in university affairs. We regard these actions as a violation of academic freedom and free scientific research, and as a means of suppressing academic debate on scholarly questions with contested political or social content — in a manner incompatible with the principles of democracy, human rights and academic freedom.

We hope such abuses of universities and scientific research will not be repeated. We hope also that the Iraqi Parliament will review the Degree Equivalency Act, rejected by the entire academic, scientific and university community, and that interference in university affairs and encroachment on their academic independence will cease — in addition to the necessity of demanding that the government increase annual budget spending on education and allocate a fixed percentage of expenditure to scientific research and innovation.

Please accept our sincerest regards.

Network of Iraqi Scientists Abroad (NISA)