A haven of learning: Iraqis describe shift of students to safety

As violence escalates in Iraq's central and southern regions, hundreds of students have sought refuge at a university in Kurdistan, the school's president said.

"They fear for their lives," said Mohammad Sadik, president of the University of Salahaddin/Hawler, the northern region's largest school with 20,000 students.

Any day on their way to classes at the other universities, they could encounter a bomb, he said in an interview. "We just had to make room."

Sadik spoke about the challenges of the sudden influx of students yesterday between attending a four-day conference at the University of Massachusetts at Boston about rebuilding Iraq. Sadik and about 10 others who have traveled from Iraq hope to learn lessons they can apply to their home country.

Since last year, the number of students seeking refuge at the University of Salahaddin/Hawler has doubled, reaching more than 1,000. To accommodate the increase in enrollment, Sadik said, the university is renting houses to serve as dorms.

The school also had to make another change. The university teaches most courses in Kurdish, instead of in Arabic, which the rest of the country uses. The school now offers six months of language training to the students and the 200 faculty who have sought refuge in Kurdistan.

Many of the students relocated with their families after they were issued death threats for working with the government. Others wanted to avoid the risks they ran simply by going to class.

At Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, two bombs exploded during an afternoon rush and killed 70 students and staff in January. The following month a suicide bomber on campus detonated a vest filled with explosives and ball bearings that killed 40.

"When you don't have safety and security, it's very hard to rebuild," said Tahir Albakaa, who also served as Iraq's minister of higher education and scientific research and is now a visiting scholar at Suffolk University. "The professors and doctors become a target."

Since April 2003, there have been 230 professors and 347 students killed, Albakaa said.

Professors have escaped to Jordan and Syria, leaving universities to cope with shrinking teaching staffs. Without resources at home, professors seeking doctoral degrees apply to programs abroad.

April Yee can be reached at ayee@globe.com.