Libyans Hope to Discard a University's Dark Past
ANNE BARNARD
TRIPOLI, Libya — Dr. Feisel Krekshi, the new dean of Tripoli University, arrived for his first day of work accompanied by 25 young men who fought their way onto campus with Kalashnikovs and homemade grenades.
His job, which former rebel commanders secretly assigned to him before they drove Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's government from Tripoli, is to reinvent Libya's most prestigious institution of higher learning — an important test case for the reshaping of the country.
Excavating the dark side of campus was almost too easy. Dr. Krekshi's fighters found war prisoners in shipping containers and drawers full of intelligence dossiers on students, not to mention a mysterious office suite near Colonel Qaddafi's preferred lecture hall. Inside was a queen-size bed, a Jacuzzi and a gynecological examining table, part of what the dean calls evidence that the deposed leader, on campus visits, summoned female students and raped them.
Now, Dr. Krekshi's larger challenge is to reverse decades of placing political orthodoxy above academic inquiry, reforming a curriculum that forced students to spend years studying Colonel Qaddafi's eccentric Green Book and a faculty he calls "90 percent contaminated."
The campus crackles with an excitement and tension that illuminate the troubles and opportunities ahead as Libyans try to overhaul nearly all the country's public institutions, long run by Colonel Qaddafi's Revolutionary Committees. The university is a bellwether, central to the frustrations and aspirations of the young generation that fueled the rebellion that swept Colonel Qaddafi from power.
"This was not a university," Dr. Krekshi, 55, told four students recently. "It was a place of intelligence and torture, a weapon to support all oppression." The students took a reporter to his office, then plopped down at his conference table to quiz him themselves, an unthinkable impertinence not long ago.
Tripoli University stands for the best and worst of the old regime. Colonel Qaddafi transformed Libya into one of the Arab world's most literate societies. University education is nearly free, and about half of all students are women. But decades of isolation have gutted basic skills, from English to critical thinking. And in the 1980s, dissident students were publicly hanged on campus.
Now the university is puzzling over the fate of loyalists, including some who cheered executions: who should be tried or fired, and who should keep their jobs to keep the campus functioning?
"Any person linked to bloodshed, directly or indirectly, has no place here," Dr. Krekshi said he told the faculty. "People who called us 'rats' " — Colonel Qaddafi's name for the rebels — "can't stay with us. Others, we can discuss."
He has sent the worst offenders home — none were arrested, he said — and assigned law professors to research ways to fairly assess the remaining 5,000 instructors.
Meanwhile, Dr. Krekshi is buoyed by the excitement of his students.
They have jettisoned the university's Qaddafi-era name, Fateh. They have persuaded Dr. Krekshi to waive student fees, install free Internet and postpone classes until student fighters return from battles in the east.
The tree-lined campus bustles as they sweep the grounds, buy trash cans, paint murals and set up student organizations to teach themselves the ropes of democracy and civil society — gleaning guidance from international law and Hollywood movies.
They are learning, like the country, to manage differences over power and politics.
Nura Bargan, 21, like most of the 120,000 students, boycotted class during the rebellion. But one sunny afternoon she returned with a broom, sweeping as students alternated the national anthem with insulting rap songs about Colonel Qaddafi.
For the first time, she said, "I feel like I have rights and duties in this country."
During the rebellion, pro-Qaddafi professors monitored conversations, and some still want to penalize students for skipping class. Some watched the cleanup, seemingly unafraid, alongside pro-rebellion colleagues (though weeks later some would flee when students demonstrated against them).
Yusef Ahmed, an earnest, intense engineering student, told Ms. Bargan that his group of schoolmates was researching online "24/7," astonished at the breadth of student activism and charity in other countries.
His vision of student life drew on Hollywood — specifically, he said sheepishly, the bawdy college movie "American Pie 2" and "Election," the Reese Witherspoon film about high school politics, and on the experiences of Chinese student activists he contacted online.
"We don't have a clue, seriously," he said. "We want to see what is wrong and what is right."
Later, campus concern grew over the group's name, the February 17 Coalition, also used by an anti-Qaddafi group dominated by Islamists. Ms. Bargan's secular friends fretted, like some national politicians, that well-organized Islamists were taking over.
But Mr. Ahmed said that the name was coincidental — Feb. 17 is the official start date of the uprising — and that when Islamists approached them to propose cooperation, they balked.
"We already have girlfriends, how can we be Islamists?" he said. They changed their name to Student Union, and now are wrestling with the Qaddafi-era Student Union for official financing.
Ms. Bargan's next stop that afternoon was the office of Dr. Krekshi, an Italian-trained gynecologist who was a medical professor at the university for years before becoming dean.
In his courtly manner, he told her and three friends the university was theirs: students were free to express all opinions if they did not coerce others.
Classes on the Green Book are finished, he said. But he urged students not to burn copies of the manifesto; recycle them, he suggested, and keep a few for historical reference.
He touched on the talk of campus: the strange bedroom suite. He said he had found DVDs of students being sexually assaulted there, corroborating student reports, but had destroyed them to protect victims' privacy.
Ms. Bargan felt bold enough to suggest he should have saved them as evidence. He said she would understand someday.
"Maybe I will be more mature then," she said with a hint of sarcasm.
Ms. Bargan went to see for herself. The rooms were next to Green Hall, the auditorium where students were indoctrinated. People wandered through, as if at a museum.
There was the gynecological table, seemingly inexplicable; the dean suggested — without citing evidence — it was for abortions, or repairing hymens.
The Jacuzzi fixtures were gold-colored, but definitely not gold. The bedroom had a worn flowered comforter, wood veneer cabinets and mass-produced Oriental rugs.
"Shlafti!" Ms. Bargan exclaimed, using slang for tacky.
Showing her around was the assistant of a professor who had lectured on the Green Book. Standing in the Green Hall — now a student center named for Rasheed Kabar, a student hanged in 1984 — the assistant said he knew nothing of any rapes and was afraid to give his name.
On the blackboard, a chalk message proclaimed, "Qaddafi is gone."