Bill Morem: The devil is in the details of Poly-Saudi deal

By Bill Morem

On the surface, it sounds like a good idea: Cal Poly entering into an agreement to help set up an engineering department at a Saudi Arabian university. Poly isn’t the only university being courted. Stanford and UC Berkeley are opening engineering and medical schools in Saudi Arabia.

It sounds above board, but on close inspection, Poly’s plan seems deeply flawed.

Here’s the situation. In the past four years, the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has sunk billions of dollars into either planning or opening more than 100 universities. That’s a good thing.

The bad thing is that if you’re a woman, Jew or homosexual, you’re not in the loop —either to teach at or attend these schools. That caveat legitimately bothers a lot of people at Poly. But that’s not the only issue that rankles.

Poly’s administration is looking at a $5.9 million, five-year contract with the Saudis to set up the engineering school in Jubail, an industrial city of some quarter million residents on the Persian Gulf.

What has united normally disparate campus groups in opposition — from College Republicans to the Progressive Student Alliance to Hillel to the Society of Women Engineers — is that the contract is being kept tightly under wraps.

A recent protest at an Academic Senate meeting seeking answers about the contract was met with indifference. In perhaps a patronizing gesture, the student groups were told not to worry, that a world-class law firm is going through the contract.

Here are some issues passed on to me by concerned Poly faculty that I hope the world-class law firm nitpicks:

• Thieves still have their hands cut off in public squares in Saudi Arabia, a procedure where Westerners are pushed to the front of the pack to get a good look. A woman recently received 200 lashes after she was gang-raped.

• Saudis don’t recognize any court of law other than their own.

• Unless you’re setting up a business, anyone entering the country — including Cal Poly engineering professors —will be an employee of the Saudi Royal Commission. This is an outfit that will oversee pretty much all aspects of your life while on Saudi soil. And the lawyers should consider this: The Royal Commission determines when and if you get an exit visa.

Proponents seem to think that the deal will bring prestige to Poly while hopefully helping Saudi Arabians to see the virtues and values of the American way of life.

Prestige? There may be some status involved, if you can overlook the culture’s treatment of minorities and draconian punishments.

Poly has put out an advisory for students wanting to travel in that part of the world that it may be dangerous; professors will be getting the equivalent of combat pay—about $180,000 a year — for going to Jubail. How safe is it over there?

Change Saudi thinking about Americans? The only thought processes that should be changed on this issue is Cal Poly’s administrative belief that keeping its faculty and students in the dark on a contract that could have far-reaching ramifications is somehow the right thing to do.