The Antenna Team

摘要

In October 2010 I was asked to join the IRFP to work with three Iraqi scholars, two based in Iraq and one in exile based in the UK, all electronic engineers. I had often empathised with the people of Iraq and when the request for my involvement came it was a time when a daily count of dead British soldiers accompanied almost every news bulletin on the BBC. Sitting comfortably in a UK university it is sometimes easy to take for granted the privileged role of British academics. At the University of Loughborough colleagues and students mostly appear happy and striving for betterment in a relatively benign atmosphere. On campus I rarely see bad manners, have never seen a fight, often leave my door open and my biggest aggravation is the cost of parking my car. Contrast this then with Iraq where shootings, kidnappings, torture and violence are still quite common today and have been much worse in the past. Imagine for a second if the walls of our universities were to be knocked aside by tanks and the fog of war began to fill our lecture theatres. What then of the learning and teaching environment our children and scholars aspire to?