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Report from the Annual Meeting of the League for Academic Cooperation in the Gulf

This Year’s Resolutions: The annual settlement of academic spheres of influence across GCC universities reaffirmed Greek predominance in Medicine, Egyptian control of Engineering, Jordanian primacy in Law and the Pakistani sphere in Computing. The United States again received no faculty but retained its special mandate to explain the Gulf to everybody else. Delegates also settled emerging border disputes, approved the voluntary mobility of scholars found on the wrong side of disciplinary frontiers, and reaffirmed their commitment to open international competition within the agreed spheres.

By Abdulrahman van der Merwe

The men from Law arrived first. They always did.

Professor Fawzi al-Mashaqbeh al-Zarqani entered the Grand Continental through the side entrance shortly after four, accompanied by two professors, an associate dean and a young lecturer who carried nothing except a leather folder and appeared to have been instructed not to speak.

Al-Mashaqbeh was chairman of the Hashemite Association for the Advancement of Legal Education Abroad, although nobody at the hotel called it that.

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Investigation

Inside the Church of the Subaltern

The Academic Standard spent three months undercover inside a notoriously insular postcolonial congregation. After gaining admission through a disputed claim to Indigenous ancestry and one-eighth Irishness, our correspondent witnessed initiation rites, methodological innovations and a schism over whether the subaltern had, in fact, spoken.

By Anastasia Mbembe-Goldberg

The Collective was not secret. Its conferences appeared on university calendars, members published under its affiliation and its annual symposium had recently received funding from two humanities centers and an initiative for transformative interdisciplinarity. What the Collective for the Interrogation of Hegemonic Speech, Representation and Epistemic Location did not welcome was observation by people who had not first established their…

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Medical Study Warns Excessive Playing with h-Index May Impair Eyesight

Researchers warn easy access to specialist websites may be exposing academics to increasingly extreme bibliometric material.

Carlos Goldfarb-Rahman · 4 min read

Knowledge Production

Nobel Prize Awarded to Economist Who Proved University Education Is Basically Pizza

Professor’s landmark theory showed that degrees, like pizzas, become cheaper when produced at scale, should arrive when promised, and need not contain anything the customer will remember eating.

Kwame von Bismarck · 5 min read

Institutional Life

University Sells Library to Hotel, Negotiates Continued Access to Books During Room-Cleaning Hours

North Wessex says partnership will preserve access to 600,000 volumes while adding 164 bedrooms and unexpectedly restoring professional librarianship.

Luz María Wojciechowski-Kim · 4 min read

From the Desks

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