By the end of 2009 there is going to be a world-class King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), north of Medina in Saudi Arabia, catering to students from all over the world.  The King’s personal endowment to this university immediately made it one of the wealthiest in the world.  In one fell swoop, he made up for a hundred years of future alumni contributions.  And as exciting as the University is as such, it is also archetypal in terms of what the King is trying to do.  One surmises he is aware of his own mortality and has read the tealeaves, and he wants to do something while he can; namely, to press Saudi Arabia forward into the future, rather than let it be dragged down to something worse than the real past, by those radical and retrogressive elements in his society. 

Here is how King Abdullah describes the KAUST project: “Wishing to rekindle and spread the great and noble virtue of learning that has marked the Arab and Muslim worlds in earlier times [emphasis added], I am establishing [KAUST].  As a new ‘House of Wisdom,’ the University shall be a beacon for peace, hope and reconciliation and shall serve the people of the Kingdom and benefit all the peoples of the world….  It is my desire that this new University become one of the world’s great institutions of research; that it educate and train future generations of scientists, engineers and technologists; and that it foster, on the basis of merit and excellence, collaboration and cooperation with other great research universities and the private sector….  Since universities striving for excellence depend on an atmosphere of exploration and initiative, nurturing and protecting freedom of research, thought and discourse related to scholarly work will be among the primary objectives….” 

Now we know what they say about ‘the best made plans of mice and men’—the whole thing could fall apart into abject miserable failure, but the King has started things off right.  Could Solomon help it if his sons rent the Kingdom of Israel when he left the scene?  The spirit evinced by King Abdullah is, let us say quasi-western, even if one prefers to have more of it aimed at the humanities subjects, and towards religion.  But I think maybe they’ll get there: knowledge and learning are strangely interconnected you know.  It’s hard to put the brakes on “exploration and initiative” and the habits of inquiry, once they get started. 

One interesting thing about what is going on is how the King has begun to construct a parallel Saudi Arabia inside the Kingdom on Saudi soil—something he really has to do from a practical standpoint, to accommodate the burgeoning population and to offer opportunities for the 15-20% unemployed.  Nevertheless, whether it is practical or inspired he is doing it.  There are far worse regimes in the world.  Recently, the military junta of Myanmar wouldn’t let the relief supplies in, even to save victims of a cyclone.  The House of Saud is not the Taliban, is not Al Qaeda (which Saudis call deviants).  They are not even distant cousins in terms of their thought or affinities.  Americans constantly misperceive what is happening in Saudi Arabia.  And speak of giving the devil his due, Bush even deserves a little of the credit. 

Not unlike Egypt’s own development of the “Red Sea Riviera,” with liberal fun zones and enterprise zones like Sharm el Sheikh, Saudi Arabia envisions the same sort of thing: zones separated in key respects from the rest of the country where men and women (even Saudi men and women) can work together and interact with one another in a desegregated environment, wearing western attire, women driving cars just like the men (only hopefully better).  But like people in the small towns along Florida’s northern coast, who don’t appreciate girls in tongs coming in off the beach and slinking into the local diner, I suspect visitors to Saudi’s Red Sea will need to cover up when they leave the designated tourist spots.  So what of it?  Is it really that hard to be polite and respect other people’s values, traditions and culture?  Does the American Heartland have to accept L.A. and New York for a universal pattern across this nation?  Do Saudi Arabia and the Arab world have to turn their villages into so many SoHo’s?  Amazingly, there are domestic crusaders in our country who actually think this.  Moreover, they are hankering for battles abroad, when the solvent effects of modernity are already doing its work; and meanwhile, they are losing the fundamental political and cultural wars at home. 

The model and core of the technical, project management, and cultural expertise required to make these advancements in Saudi Arabia is coming from none other than Saudi Aramco.  The king chose this company to lead the projects, and it is an excellent choice.  The name Aramco derives from Arabian American Oil Company, which celebrates its 75^th Anniversary this year.  While Saudi Aramco is Saudi owned today, American oil interests, including Texaco—and literally hundreds of U.S. scientists, workers and families over the years, have had very close involvement with the company and development in the Kingdom over the course of its history; and more cooperative enterprises are underway. 

Based on this fact, there are two points I wish to draw out further.  First, that these many years of interaction with Americans—many from the Great State of Texas in the oil industry and also in the military, heralded first in 1933 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt established relations—these interactions have essentially “seeded” the Kingdom.  It reminds me of the Parable of the Sower and those seeds that eventually spring up come what may.  Perhaps there’s more to the parable besides.  I’ll leave unsaid the extent of my theological optimism, except to suggest what comes next.  Freedom to think and to enquire leads in my view to questioning about religion, its tenets and practice; and this will produce a revolution in the Arab world in due time.  The Second point I wish to draw is the tremendous importance of Americans engaging with the world, while not expecting immediate results.  The history of American society, the South in particular, should make it intuitively clear to us that lasting social change comes slowly, even with a few fits and starts.     

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary.  Article based on remarks to Salado Lions Club (Noon Group) at the Civic Center in Salado, Texas (11 June 2008).  Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

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