Originally, the full list of the names of the recipients of direct emails from me was posted below, divided into several sections, given its length -- 116 pages in all. But following the disappearance of the piece titled "About Me" from the blog, I thought that my blogs (four of them) had taken too much space. So I retained the introductory part intact and deleted the rest, particularly since not many people seem to be interested in it.
If anyone wants it, however, I can email a PDF print of it directly. I can be reached by phone at (960) 332-7488 most of the time between 0500 and 1900 hours GMT -- that is, between 1000 and 0000 hours the Maldives local time (= GMT + 5 hours) -- or by mail at PO Box 2139, Post Office Building, Malé 20026, Maldives.
If anyone wants it, however, I can email a PDF print of it directly. I can be reached by phone at (960) 332-7488 most of the time between 0500 and 1900 hours GMT -- that is, between 1000 and 0000 hours the Maldives local time (= GMT + 5 hours) -- or by mail at PO Box 2139, Post Office Building, Malé 20026, Maldives.
This list, although already containing about
35,000 names, is somewhat deficient. At
the beginning, the list of recipients I intended was much wider in scope (ie, more
nations and universities) than it is now, but given the colossal amount of time
taken in downloading email addresses, translating needed info on non-English
websites, and other difficulties (see below) it has
been narrowed down considerably.
In a sense, this resulting list also places more
emphasis on “world education” vis-à-vis “religious fundamentalism,” the two
topics of the basic paper “Education and Fundamentalism,” since it now excludes,
for one reason or another, most populous developing nations currently plagued
by Islamic fundamentalism, such as Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Nigeria, and even Russia.
But given the fact that the flaws in the current world education system
is at the “root” and fundamentalism largely a branch emanating from it in
spite of other vital factors being involved in the process (see basic paper,
paragraph 15) dealing with the former is the more crucial step
forward at present – a step that will serve as the springboard for subsequent
tackling of the latter. And notwithstanding
its origins, religious fundamentalism also has a very different set of rules of
engagement, thus by necessity, it has to be tackled separately and on its own
terms. However, I do not see how this
can be practically done without first tackling the flaws in the current world
education system and the solution being
accepted publicly and globally, as that solution is the
starting point and the foundation on which the solution for religious
fundamentalism could be based. Thus expeditious
tackling and compensating for the flaws in current world education system is
the starting point forward. And while
benefits of this spread across the Globe helping to improve human wellbeing, it
will lay firm ground works for tackling religious fundamentalism. Moreover, even if it is not dealt with separately,
if
we have a popular “education solution” at hand and given the logic
of the paragraph referred to above, my surmise is that the intensity of religious fundamentalism rampant currently will wane
on its own. This makes such a solution, as
the partial one suggested in the basic paper, all the more urgent and
critical.
Summary of the Distribution of the Listed
Universities, Departments, and Academics among Nations
Nation No. of Universities No. of Departments No.
of Academics
____________________________________________________________________________________________
22 nations 103
universities 536 departments 34,776 academics
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________-_____
Note: The total number of academics is
not counting those to whom the writings may have been delivered through the
respective departments. In the list,
some names would also appear more than once because of their cross-department
affiliations, but those repetitions have not been counted. And the listing of names is mostly in the
order as they appear in their respective websites.
Summary List of Universities to Departments of
Which the Emails were Sent: (departments
involved, if they exist in any given university, are: education, philosophy,
psychology, sociology, political science, and communication; where they were
non-existent, related supplementary departments have also been selected)
Australia: ANU,
Macquarie, Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney, UniSA, and UNSW; Austria: Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg,
and Vienna; Belgium: Antwerp, Libre
Brussels, and Vrije Brussels; Canada:
Alberta, McGill, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, and UBC; Denmark: Copenhagen; Egypt: AUC; Finland: Helsinki; France: AUP; Lyon 2 Lumiere, Lyon 3
Jean Moulin, Pantheon-Sorbonne, Provence, Paris Descartes (Education); Germany: Free Berlin,
Humboldt Berlin, Bonn, Frankfurt,
Hamburg, and Munich; Hong
Kong: CUHK and HKU; Ireland:
TrinityCollegeDublin and UniversityCollegeDublin; Israel: Hebrew U, Tel
Aviv U, Haifa, Open U; Italy:
Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Milano-Bicocca, Napoli-Federico, Palermo,
UniRomaTre, Sapienza Rome, Turin, Napoli SU (Psychology), and Napoli
UniSOB; Netherlands: Amsterdam,
Erasmus, Groningen, Leiden, and Utrecht; New
Zealand: Auckland, Canterbury, Massey, Otago, and Victoria; Norway: Oslo; Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy; South Africa: Cape Town; Sweden: Gothenburg, Lund, Stockholm,
and Uppsala; Switzerland: Basel, Bern,
Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich; UK:
Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester,
Newcastle, Open U, Oxford, and Ulster; USA:
Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Houston, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC
Berkeley, UCLA, UHM, Yale, and Santa Fe Institute
As mentioned at the outset, I encountered several
difficulties while compiling this list. In
China and Egypt, for example, websites with email addresses of academic staff seem
to be almost nonexistent, and in Russia, Turkey, and Hungary, the websites I
checked were largely in their specific languages/scripts and I did not have sufficient
time to navigate through those and all other non-English language websites by deciphering
possible captions using the Google Translation Tool; the needed email addresses
being inaccessible on their English pages.
Yet I spent more than a year in downloading the available email addresses,
and postponed the emailing several times.
These were most downloading difficulties of a generic nature. There were also difficulties related to
specific departments of some universities of some nations, mainly because the email
addresses of one or more of the six departments (see “Introduction”) in some universities
being unavailable while those of the rest of the departments were, and my requests
to circumvent those difficulties either by providing me address lists or by
allowing me to send my writings to their academic staff through department
administrations being met with silence; this was except the Department of
Philosophy of University of Cape Town, which responded positively to my
request. In a few universities, email
addresses were not accessible across the board; contacts available being only
via message boxes, which were not suitable for my purposes since I had
attachments to deliver. A last
difficulty arose from seasonal differences between the academic schedules of
the universities in northern and southern hemispheres and between those of
North America and Europe, since I wanted to email simultaneously to everyone towards
the middle of their academic sessions; in the end, I had to go with the
northern hemisphere, given the dominant weight of the number of academic staff in
its universities whose email addresses I was able to download (about 87% of the
35,000 mentioned).
