The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s news briefs today (subscriber site) has this little brief:
Saudi notions of gender equity have been imported this summer to Virginia Tech, which is segregating some 60 male and female professors from King Abdulaziz University in a six-week faculty-development program, according to an article in The Roanoke Times. Virginia Tech is offering the program under a contract with the Saudi university, which is located in Jeddah. The Saudi men and women are taking identical but gender-specific courses in communications, English instruction, distance education, and other topics. “This is the way they teach their courses over there, and this is the way they wish their courses to be taught over here,” the Times quoted a Virginia Tech spokesman as saying.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t wait to hear the way the citizens of Virginia tell Virginia Tech their wishes on the subject … although no doubt they’ll get a harrumph about the need to recognize the equality of all cultures above our own or some such nonsense.
