Iraqi Education

More interesting meetings today. I made my presentation on education and got a lot of head nodding when I talked about using examples to teach about limited government, the separation of powers, the protection of private property, and the supremacy of law over power. As a result, I’ve been invited to go into Baghdad for dinner with some Kurdish activists. (That means leaving the hotel without the armed security guards, but I’ll be with locals, so I feel pretty safe.)

I also met two very impressive “master teachers” who are working to set up the first private school in Iraq. (All private schools were shut down by the Ba’athists). I hope to put them in touch with some folks in the U.S. who could help with teacher training, school management skills, and the like. (Another project I’ve come up with is to get more English-language books on liberty over here for the universities, much as I did in the Soviet Union and the other communist states of Europe.)

I made the acquaintance of a very sharp and impressive Harvard professor who offered to help me to get the Declaration of Independence into Arabic. (My friend Omar Altalib, who is working with the Ministry of Eduction here, got me a copy of a translation into Arabic of the U.S. Constitution — including the amendments.) I hope that we can publish a snappy version of the two documents in a pocket edition before the end of the year.

I’m also hoping to get some ministers from the Iraqi government to attend the Cato conference on “A Liberal Agenda for the New Century: A Global Perspective” that will be held April 8-9 in Moscow. (I will probably have to raise some money to pay for the additional expenses.) Maart Laar, the former Prime Minister of Estonia who radically changed that country, is also here at the conference and will be speaking at the conference in Moscow, as well. He’s a real breath of fresh air: a serious politician who loves liberty and who manages to combine political intelligence with a dedication to principle. (The latter point is why he was Prime Minister twice, for he was defeated after the backlash occasioned by his radical classical liberal reform program in Estonia, and then reelected after the reforms started to bear fruit.)