Middle East Notes and Comment: Us, Them, and the Knowledge Gap

On Monday, October 20, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) will issue a new report on what it calls “the knowledge gap” in the Arab world. The report is a followon to the comprehensive Arab Human Development Report 2002 issued a year ago. Next week’s report has a narrower focus, looking specifically at the relatively small role that the acquisition, dissemination, and development of knowledge plays in Arab economies, and the political and social obstacles to having it play a larger one.

It is not pleasant reading, and some statistics are shocking.

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Jon B. Alterman
Senior Vice President, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and Director, Middle East Program