Duke Seeks to Host International Center for Afghan Studies
An international institute hopes to reinvigorate Afghan studies and help struggling Afghan universities
Duke would become the U.S. headquarters of a new Institute for Afghanistan Studies if a proposal endorsed by a gathering of the world's top Afghanistan scholars becomes reality.
More than two dozen scholars -- mostly historians and anthropologists -- attended a workshop at the John Hope Franklin Center Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 to reinvigorate an area of study that has been virtually stagnant since the Soviet war began in 1978.
The group unanimously approved the idea of pursuing the creation of an institute in Kabul that would offer a base for American, European and Afghan researchers. There are 16 such centers in the world, which are funded mostly with money from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Education. The host institution in the United States generally provides an office and the time of a professor or graduate students to handle administrative matters.
"This is a great opportunity for Duke to further research and scholarship on Afghanistan, while at the same time contributing to that country's intellectual life," said Gilbert W. Merkx, Duke's vice provost for international affairs and director of the Center for International Studies.
The institute could have a presence in Kabul within a few months, said Duke history professor John Richards, who is a former chairman of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). The group would likely rent a house which could serve as a center of operations, hostel and library.
"We know the formula works," Richards said. "What you do is help create a more coherent community of scholars."
Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary of academic programs at the State Department, said the State Department is interested in fostering research in Afghanistan, with particular interest in the education of young people, the engagement of women and literacy.
"I want to see you, as a scholarly community, playing an active role in Afghanistan," he said. "We have a debt, we have a responsibility and as human beings we have an interest."
Mary Ellen Lane, executive director of CAORC, said the Afghanistan center could become part of a network of centers for Southwest Asia, similar to the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, which focuses on North Africa and has research centers in Tunis and Tangiers.
Although federal money funds fellowships only for U.S. citizens or green-card holders, the institute would likely coordinate with the Fulbright program to fund Afghan researchers in the U.S., and would offer resources to scholars from all nations to visit Kabul, Richards said.
Lane said the centers often expand beyond just supporting advanced research and offer literacy and economics classes to local women, public lectures, exhibitions and even local cleanup projects.
Richards said he will travel to Washington next week to talk with officials at the State Department and work out the details of engaging other universities, incorporating as a non-profit organization and negotiating a bilateral agreement with the government of Afghanistan.
"The Soviet War, plus the civil war after it, destroyed higher education in Afghanistan and sent into flight most of the faculty of Kabul University," Richards said. "I think we can do some things that will be quite useful to the people who live in the nation-state of Afghanistan."
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