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This thesis examines the transfer of an American pedagogical model to the Arabian Gulf against the wider context of the globalisation of higher education. Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar is used as a case study to examine how American medical knowledge and professional practice are transmitted to and assimilated by an Arabic social setting. It considers the workings of what is presumed to be a universal pedagogical model by examining how the degree is culturally translated and localised in Qatar. It addresses the question of whether or not the Cornell degree of “Doctor of Medicine” is simply an American product transplanted to the Middle East, or rather a malleable artefact: sought out, manipulated and shaped by the Qataris for their own ends. Medical education necessitates a highly challenging process of acculturation that is amplified for Arabic-educated students who enter the American medical curriculum without many of the values derived from a Western educational system. In addition to language, students from Arabic-medium schools cite dress, familial, cultural and ethical dissonance as issues that had to be negotiated while undertaking the degree. Students enrolled at the American-style medical college currently divide their clinical training between the Gulf and America. The structure of the imported curriculum and biomedical practices generated in the metropole demand that students become bilingually competent in both Arab and American health care systems. The “American way” of doing things, however, does not always translate or conform to cultural mores and standard practice within the Gulf setting. This thesis follows Arab students as they move between the coeducational American academic setting and local health care facilities, examining the ways that the physicians-in-training contextualise, appropriate and reconstruct the medical degree according to their own cultural referential framework. The thesis introduces the language of “transplantation” as a heuristic tool through which the globalisation of higher education might be explored conceptually. It is an ethnography of an emergent educational transplant propagated in a globalised era, which explores novel modes of knowledge transfer, institutional and social arrangements across local and transnational boundaries, changing subjectivities and the generation of new life forms. In a setting in the Islamic world, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar provides a strategic site for observing the dynamics of a nation and its people grappling with modernity. Through its production of Americanstyle doctors in a non-American setting, Cornell’s transnational medical school serves as a niche through which to explore the tensions that arise in global models of tertiary education.

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This thesis analyses the problematic trajectory of the Syrian Revolution 2011, which was inspired by the Arab Spring. It first evaluates the causes of the revolution during Bashar al-Asad's era. An era was aimed to be a transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from suppression to fair openness. It second investigates the factors behind turning the Arab Spring into a Syrian winter, plunging the country into internal war and uncontrolled violence. The research is based on a qualitative approach that includes interviews as a source of information and analysis. Factors covered are the disintegration of Syrian society as the greatest challenge for the civil uprising and mass mobilization as well as the regime's coherent inner core accounting for the regime's violence and persistence. As violence breeds violence, the revolutionaries decided to react violently towards the regime brutality descending the country into an internal war. The formulation of the Free Syrian Army was formalized, but could not transform into a proper military formation, and so could not control the spread of violence in the country. The inclination towards Jihad was evident and common, and associated with resorting to violence because the revolutionaries are Muslims, and believed in Jihad as a way to defend themselves and their families. However, Jihad became more formalized with the arrival of global Jihadists to Syria, forming Jihadist groups and controlling parts of Syria. The stance of the international community was another big obstacle helped escalating, but not terminating the conflict. A conflict could develop into a devastating regional crisis changing the structure of the Middle East and changing the international politics of this vital region.

The thesis discusses the progress or lack thereof of in the Middle East, specifically Egypt to achieve "democracy". It will critically explore the reasons why the Arab Spring happened, what were the factors and what changed in Egypt during those times until the present. I will show how it was before the revolution in Egypt which toppled ex-president Mubarak, examine the transition phase when ex-president Morsi was in power, and at the end the second revolution or coup d'état by current president El-Sisi. With that said Egypt will be compared with the other countries in the region; Tunisia, Libya and Syria, and we will see what are some of the similarities in the revolutions as well as some of the differences.

The thesis examines the process of state formation of the only surviving federal state in the Arab world: the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It tries to answer questions related to the historical circumstances leading to the federation; the respective role of the British officials and the local rulers in it; and the methods and strategies employed by the rulers of these Emirates during the negotiations leading to the formation of the federation to preserve their local status and power while bridging the gaps between them and establishing a viable state. It argues that, of the main sets of political players at the time (the British officials and the local rulers), it was the interaction among the rulers that led to the successful outcome of announcing the new state. Even during the successive negotiations to establish unions, the rulers of the Emirates did not differ over the forming of a larger state; however they did disagree on their influence over decision-making institutions within the new state. Therefore, it was the recognition by the rulers of each other’s power and the value of their potential contribution to the future union that determined the issue of the negotiations and the inclusion or exclusion of a particular ruler from the union. The ambition of this research is to contribute to the literature on federal state formation in the post-colonial world, with a particular emphasis on the process, the forces, and the avenues leading to the merging of various components into one political entity. It relies on newly-released British official documents and the increasing availability of personal accounts (books, articles and memoirs) by individuals who participated in the negotiations, giving new tools to investigate various aspects of the social, economic and political factors associated with the formation of the state on the Coast of Oman.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / The aim of this thesis is to explore the feasibility of an export-geared building industrialization in the United Arab Emirates, and to develop a tentative strategy for the implementation of such industrialization. The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E), a rapidly growing country, is chosen as the subject of this study, mainly because oil, which triggered the wealth and rapid development, is regarded by the government as an essential but temporary source of income; and a national policy to diversify the country's industrial development is, therefore, being pursued. Industrialization of the building sector is advocated in this thesis, as part of this diversification scheme. The first chapter summarizes the situation in the U.A.E in terms of geographical, vital, and economical statistics. The second chapter outlines the components of the Alpha - Beta Model (Grant, D.), the Method of Paired Comparison, and the Churchmann Ackoff Method for Weighting Objectives, as a formal means to evaluate and define the most appropriate industrialization approach. The third chapter applies these methods to the U.A.E's context, by evaluating the "open systems" and the "closed systems" approaches against selected objectives, derived for the data analysis. The fourth, and final, chapter attempts to define a strategy for the implementation of an export-geared building industrialization in the U.A.E. / by Toufic Elias Kadri. / M.S.

This study explores the use of source texts in academic writing by postgraduate students from Arab backgrounds in three UK universities. The specific focus of the study is to develop an understanding of how Arab students in the UK use sources, how they adapt to UK academic expectations, as well as how their educational backgrounds may affect their source use and adaptation to UK academic expectations. The participants in this research included a group of 22 Arab postgraduate students from three UK universities. To respond to the research aims, the data generated included 40 (already assessed by their tutors) text-based assignments collected from the participants. The analysis used Pecorari and Shaw's (2012) typology as a starting point to explore the forms of intertextuality evident in the Arab students' writing. A second source of data was interviews with seven students from the same group of participants. The analysis made use of the MAXQDA data analysis software, including facilitating the textual analysis of intertextuality in the student texts and the thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. The findings suggest that unconventional use of sources does occur among this group of students, including over-reliance on sources, patchwriting, frequent use of direct quotation, and forms of paraphrasing that rely on synonym substitution. The study further suggests that unconventional use of sources may be explained by the students' past educational experiences in their Arab home contexts. This includes a lack of written culture, low readership in the region, culture of orality, acceptability of violations of copyright, and 'traditional' teaching practices in the educational systems of the region. The study also shows how the students' educational backgrounds created transition challenges for students when arriving in the academic setting in the UK. Finally, the study presents various strategies used by this group of students to adapt to the UK academic environment. The study contributes by presenting a four level framework of intertextuality, developed from the data in this study and extending on Pecorari and Shaw's typology. This includes intertextuality on the word, sentence, paragraph, and structure levels of the students' academic writing. This expanded view of intertextuality, including a level-based framework, enhances understanding of the forms of intertextuality prevalent in these students' texts, and highlights the specific challenges these Arab students have faced in their transition to become academic writers in the UK context. The thesis also concludes with what are the lessons, as evident from this study, for UK Universities in supporting Arab students.