By Ursula Lindsey. Ten years after Tamazight—the language of the Amazigh, the country’s Berber population— began being taught in schools here, and four after it was constitutionally recognized as an official language, it remains unclear how it will be incorporated into education.
The recognition of Tamazight has been very meaningful, a redefinition of Moroccan identity, says Paul Silverstein, an anthropologist at Reed College who has studied the issue.
Tamazight is the standardized version of the Amazigh languages. An estimated 25 to 30 million speakers of Tamazight and other Berber dialects are spread throughout the North African countries, from the Atlantic Ocean to Egypt. More...

By Rim Hayat Chaif. Algerian leaders switched their official language from French to Arabic after the country’ war of independence in the early 1960s.
Forty years later, the government labeled Tamazight—the mother tongue of the Berbers— as a “national” language. The move fell short of putting Tamazight on par with Arabic but nonetheless recognized that 25 percent of Algerians speak the language. More...

By Ahmad Sabri. In Saudi Arabia, the children of Saudi mothers and foreign fathers have long faced difficulties getting an education and have been charged extra fees, part of larger problem they have accessing government-supported services, including health care. The children of Saudi men, even if they were born abroad and have been living abroad, are automatically fully Saudi and receive all benefits. More...

By Motiaa Hallak. Kamal, a 20-year-old Syrian living here, is not afraid of failing the exams that could determine where, and if he might go to university. He has been studying hard and feels well prepared for the exams. But he fears that any certificate granted by the interim Syrian government in exile would be unrecognizable in the country where he is living. More...

By Khalid Aitnasser. Abdel Raheem Talby, a 23-year-old student of social sciences at Ibn Zuhr University, in Southern Morocco, has more to worry about than his grades and his exams. More...

By Abdel Moneim Alaghima, John Dyer. Libyan government scholarship payments to universities and professional training courses around the world have always been spotty. Last month, the Libyan government released funding for the 2014-2015 academic year — ending months of fretting by students struggling to make ends meet and pay tuition to receive credit for their studies. More...

By Tarek Abd El-Galil. Post-graduate studies at Egypt’s public universities suffer from difficulties in conducting research and are tainted by high incidences of plagiarism and corruption, including mild forms of extortion, students say. More...

By Benjamin Plackett, Selim Njeim. “Food security” is the term that researchers began using in the late 1990s as they shifted their focus from stopping famines to studying the long-term ability of families or countries to have an adequate food supply. Interest in the field increased after the 2008 global spike in food prices, due to a variety of factors ranging from changing diets to rising energy costs. More...

By Benjamin Plackett. The next leader of the American University of Beirut will move across an ocean to take up his post in September, exchanging the sprawling Atlanta for the relatively compact Beirut. More...

By Benjamin Plackett. The freedom of Arab academics to think and express themselves is threatened, a situation they share with many African and Asian colleagues. But the United States, Australia and Japan have also witnessed encroachment on academic freedom in recent years. More...