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Project Afghanistan

Project Afghanistan began in March 2005 when Alexander Nakhimovsky, associate professor of computer science and a member of the Colgate Center for Freedom and Western Civilization's advisory board, traveled to Washington to meet with R. Michael Smith '70, and Dr. Ashraf Ghani, chancellor of Kabul University. (Michael Smith had known Dr.Ghani from his work in Afghanistan.)

In the weeks that followed, Project Afghanistan came into existence, formulated its goals, and established connections with several complementary efforts.

Initial funding for the project was provided by the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization, which sees the project as a natural extension of its mission: Afghanistan is a country that is struggling to build a stable democracy, and one of the main pre-requisites for stable democracy is high-quality university education that both instills the habits of critical thinking and prepares for careers in the modern world. Funding was also provided by the offices of the Dean of the Faculty and the Dean of the College.

This was followed by external grants from the Walter S. Mander Foundation ($25,000, fall 2005); the USAID ($80,000, February 2006, administered by Washington State University); the NEH Digital Humanities Fellowship ($54,400, December 2007), and the Fulbright Senior Specialist grant for two visits to Dushanbe, Tajikistan in May 2009 and May 2010.

The main activities of Project Afghanistan have been:

  • May, 2009: Fulbright-sponsored lectures on uses of technology in Applied Linguistics at the Russian University of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Follow-up visit in May 2010.
  • December, 2008: The NEH project resulted in a powerful collaborative framework called EventMap that consists of timeline-controlled sequences of Google maps, annotated by Web material of arbitrary complexity, including time-aligned multimedia. More detailed descriptions are provided in the User Guide and the Authoring Guide. We have also created a DVD that contains the framework and the Afghanistan-related materials we have developed.
  • October, 2008: Organized visit to Colgate by Dr. Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University.
  • December, 2007: Started initial planning for the NEH-funded project "The History and Ethnography of Pashtuns: A Searchable Database of Annotated Documentaries and other Multimedia." The main work on the project will occupy the second half of 2008.
  • September 24, 2007: Organized visit by the prominent British documentary film maker Dr. AndrĂ© Singer who gave a lecture and showed his documentary on Pathans (Pashtuns). This was followed by Questions and Answers with AndrĂ© Singer, Noor Khan (History) and Bruce Rutherford (Political Science), moderated by Andy Rotter (History and P-CON). The announcement said, in part:
    Pashtuns form by far the largest tribal alliance in the world. They live along the Afghanistan - Pakistan border, which they consider, with good reason, a formality imposed on them by the West. While only a fraction of Pashtuns are Taliban, most Taliban are Pashtuns. In the documentary, you will see that Pahtun tribal leaders are thoughtful intelligent men who follow a logic of their own. This event will help you form a better understanding of the people some of whom protect Osama bin Laden and wage war on Afghan, American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
  • 2007-08 academic year: Continue developing course materials for the bachelor's program in computer science at Kabul University. Develop advanced English-language materials for CS and IT professional based on digital video recordings of MIT lectures on computer science, available under the MIT Open Courseware project. Develop advanced English-language materials for students of economics, based on Milton Friedman's television series Free to Choose. (We gratefully acknowledge the permission by the Chitester Foundation and the IdeaChannel to use these materials.)
  • 2006-07 academic year: Develop curriculum and course materials for the bachelor's program in computer science at Kabul; serve as consultant for the MS program.
  • March 1-3 2006: Host an International Conference on Education and Development at Colgate. Participants include the Afghanistan ambassador to the United States and Dr. Ghani, as well as several prominent educators and technologists from the United States, Germany, and South Africa. The conference has been sponsored by the Walter S. Mander Foundation grant.
  • October 2005: Conduct a workshop at Kabul University to redesign the computer science program there, jointly with colleagues from University of Maryland. The new curriculum goes into effect in March 2006.
  • Summer 2005: Develop educational materials for Kabul University, with valuable assistance from Mr. Faisal Nur, a linguist from Washington, D.C., who worked for many years for the Voice of America Afghan Section. The materials include video recordings of lectures by Colgate professors, translated into Pashto by Mr. Nur. This work was supported by the initial funding from CFWC, Dean of the Faculty, and Dean of the College.