Seventy professors have resigned in protest from Afghanistan’s Kabul University (KU) after reports surfaced that Vice Chancellor Dr Mohammad Osman Babury was replaced by Afghan Taliban’s appointee Muhammad Ashraf Ghairat.
Several social media accounts claimed that the professors stepped down from their positions at KU after Dr Babury, who holds a PhD in Pharmacognosy from Germany’s Philipps-University was replaced by Ghairat, who has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from KU.
In the wake of the resignations, Ghairat has been actively defending his appointment on Twitter. Ghairat said he had spent his life so far in academia and therefore deemed himself ‘fully qualified’ for the position.
https://twitter.com/MAshrafGhairat/status/1440378800894660610
Ghairat has also revealed his commitment to turning KU’s focus towards Islamic studies. In a tweet, the new chancellor said that he was looking to install more ‘pro-Muslim scholars’ at the university to achieve ‘Islamization of the curriculum’.
https://twitter.com/MAshrafGhairat/status/1440899123587297282
Universities have been a seminal site of change after the Afghan Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in August. As US troops withdrew from Afghanistan after their two-decade long War on Terror, several Afghan women claimed that they were asked to return home from their universities in Herat and Kabul.
According to recent developments however, under the new regime, women would be allowed to attend universities if they wore the hijab and were segregated from their male peers in classrooms.
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