They don't really hate us

Jackson Diehl:

We all know that the United States has never been more unpopular in the Middle East. That, anyway, is what polls tell us -- one out recently from the Brookings Institution reported that for the first time, the U.S. president is more disliked among Arabs than the prime minister of Israel.

So what explains why more Arab students than ever are trying to get into one of the four accredited American universities based in the region -- not to mention the branches of U.S. campuses that are sprouting like mushrooms? Simple, says David Arnold, president of the American University in Cairo, which received 2,500 applications for the 1,000 places in its incoming class, 20 percent more than last year. "There is a large and growing demand for the gold standard in higher education, which is an American education."

"Most people don't hate us," adds Winfred L. Thompson, chancellor of the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. "They admire American institutions. They admire American education. They admire the openness of our society."

Arnold, Thompson and the presidents of the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University were in Washington last month to push this counterpoint to conventional wisdom and to draw attention to the contribution their institutions are making to U.S. interests in the region. They were careful not to identify themselves with the Bush administration -- in fact, their relations with the State Department are curiously lukewarm.

Still, the universities offer encouraging evidence of why a mission to spread liberal and democratic values in the Middle East is not quixotic. To a large and growing extent, U.S.-chartered or accredited universities are training the elite of countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, the Persian Gulf states and, soon, Iraq. They are teaching women equally with men; opening programs in Western-style journalism; offering cutting-edge courses in capitalism, science and politics; and providing a refuge for free intellectual and political debate.

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These people are also clamoring to get into this country too and not for the purpose of exploding. t is a reflection of why polling in this region can be very misleading. The ultimate poll is how people would vote with their feet. One of the problems is self asserting peer pressure in a culture where people answer what they think they are expected to say.