Isaura Daniel*
isaura.daniel@anba.com.br
São Paulo – A group of chancellors and professors of Brazilian universities should travel to Lebanon in April next year. They are going to participate in a seminar to discuss cooperation in higher education. According to information disclosed by the Ministry of Education of Brazil (MEC), the meeting should proceed with the talks that university researchers and professors began at the Brazil-Lebanon Academic Seminar, which took place in August this year, at the University of Brasília (UnB), in Brazilian capital Brasília.
The organisation of the seminar was the theme of a visit that the chancellor of the University of Lebanon, Zouheir Chokr, made to Brazil early this month, in which he met the higher education secretary of the country, Ronaldo Mota. The specific date for the meeting and the site have not yet been defined. According to the spokesperson for international affairs at the MEC, Alexandre Silveira, the idea is for the Lebanese and Brazilians to exchange information about their areas and also to discuss the possibilities of joint research at the seminar.
Silveira recalls that it is necessary for each of the parties to understand how higher education works in the other country so that points in common may be identified and for cooperation to be established. One of the possibilities is for, at the occasion of the Brazilian visit to Lebanon, in April, an agreement to be signed in the area of information technology applied to education. Chancellor Chokr showed interest in the matter when he was in Brazil, according to Silveira.
The international advisor at the MEC recalls that Brazil and Lebanon are very important to each other, due to the Lebanese immigrants who live in Brazil and also to the Brazilians who live in Lebanon, but he added that both governments have never been as close to each other as they are now. Talks between both countries in the area of higher education began when the Brazilian minister of education, Fernando Haddad, travelled to Lebanon, in early 2006. At the time, an agreement was signed with the Ministry of Education of Lebanon, forecasting cooperation in the area of Education.
According to Silveira, however, the plans had to be postponed due to the political conflicts lived by Lebanon. They were retaken, however, when the Ministry of Foreign Relations promoted a mission to the country, in October last year, as soon as the situation in the country cooled down and reconstruction began. The seminar in the academic area that took place this year is already part of the cooperation program initially planned.
*Translated by Mark Ament
