An-Najah National University (Arabic: جامعة النجاح الوطنية) is a non-governmental public university governed by a board of trustees in Nablus, West Bank, Palestine. The university has 22,000 students and 300 professors in 19 faculties. It is the largest university in the State of Palestine.
Contents
Manifesto
It was chartered as a full-fledged university in 1977.
Timeline
1918: Established as a primary school (An-Najah Nabulsi School) educating students, both local and from abroad.
1941: The institution was named An-Najah College.
1965: Became a teacher preparation institute, also granting intermediate university degrees.
1977: Evolved into a full-fledged university, An-Najah National University with a Faculty of Arts and a Faculty of Sciences and joined the Association of Arab Universities (AARU) as a full member.
1978: Faculties of Economics, Administrative Sciences, Educational Sciences and Engineering were inaugurated.
1981: First master's degree Program was established in curricula management at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and An-Najah was accepted as a member in the World Union of Universities.
1984: Closed for 4 months by the Israeli army
1985: Expanded the scope of higher studies to include new fields including Chemistry, Islamic Studies and Education.
1994: Faculty of Pharmacy was established; new faculties and specialized scientific centers were introduced, including the Academic Program for the Study of Involuntary Migration (APSIM); the Water and Environmental Studies Institute; the Center for Studies, Consultation and Technical Services; and the Business and Technology Incubator.
1995: Faculty of Law was established.
1997: Signed an agreement with the director-general of the UNESCO to establish the UNESCO Chair on Human Rights and Democracy. In the same year, the university launched the Arabic for Non-Native Speakers Program.
Student body
Most of the students are Palestinian, but there are also students and professors from all over the world. Languages spoken on campus include Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, and Spanish.
Faculty
The university president is Rami Hamdallah. The vice-president for academic affairs is Maher Natsheh and the vice-president for administration affairs is Shaker AlBitar.
Ansam Sawalha, who is the dean of the faculty of pharmacy, is the first Palestinian woman named to the Women in Science Hall of Fame in 2011. Sawalha was honored for her achievement of establishing the first Poison Control and Drug Information Center in the Palestinian Territories in 2006.
Political conflicts regarding faculty
In 2010 six members of the faculty including Ghassan Khaled were arrested by Palestinian Authority security forces for being closely linked to a charity that is suspected of being a front for Hamas. In 2011, Abdel Sattar Qassem, a professor of political science at the university and critic of the Palestinian leadership was arrested by the Palestinian Authority following a complaint by the university president that Qassem had written an article critical of the university administration for refusing to comply with a court order rescinding its decision to expel four students. Qassem had been targeted in the past by Palestinian security forces, and was at one point shot and wounded.
Courses
The university has sixteen scientific faculties and humanities faculties. An-Najah offers undergraduate instruction in the fields of medicine, engineering, humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences, as well as courses of graduate study in humanities and the social sciences.
The scientific faculties include:
Faculty of Science
Faculty of Engineering
Faculty of Information Technology
Faculty of Agriculture
Faculty of Human Medicine
Faculty of Optometry
Faculty of Pharmacy
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Faculty of Nursing
Faculty of Physical Education
The Humanities Faculties include:
Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Fine Arts
Faculty of Islamic Law (Shari'a)
Faculty of Law
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences
Faculty of Educational Sciences
Faculty of Graduate Studies.
Cooperation and foreign exchange
The university has several partner universities. These account with their exchange students for a significant part of the foreign students at An-Najah. Another number of foreign students are drawn to An-Najah for the courses in Arabic for foreigners offered by the university.
Twinnings
There is twinning between An-Najah National University and several British student unions:
University of Essex Students' Union; since 1991
University of Manchester Students' Union; since 2006, in spite of substantial opposition. A very wide campaign was held in 2007 to either cancel the twinning, or have the An-Najah Union sign a declaration denouncing terrorism, but the campaign was heavily defeated when it came to a vote.
London School of Economics students' union.
Partner universities
Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany
McGill University Middle East Program (MMEP) in Civil Society and Peace Building. Each year, 2500 of An-Najah's undergraduate students participate in volunteer programs run through the MMEP's Community Service Centre in Nablus.
West Bank affiliated institutes
Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie, Tulkarm