University of Algiers

University of Algiers   (University)
Formation	1909
Headquarters	Algiers, Algeria
Originally French colonial university, then Arabized after independence in 1961

The University of Algiers Benyoucef Benkhedda is a university located in Algiers, Algeria. It was founded in 1909 and is organized into seven faculties.

Colonial History

The University of Algiers was founded on December 30, 1909, allowing students to pursue complete higher education in French Algieria up to doctorate level. The University of Algiers, one of the 16 French regional universities, responds both to the Republican desire to raise the level of training and to the colonial policy: "To provide education to all the children of the nations who contribute to the population of Algeria ”. In fact, the demands of colonization allow a very limited number of Muslim Algerians to enter the university, in particular to provide middle managers for colonization - just like in the French army which trains "native" subaltern officers. (the term "native" simply means "of local stock".)

On the demographic level, the University of Algiers welcomed around thirty “native Algerian” students in 1914 (out of a total number of around 500), and around a hundred per year from 1930 to 1939. A larger number began or continued his higher studies in mainland France, notably in Paris (around thirty in 1930, around fifty in 1935), or in other universities such as those of Montpellier and Toulouse. The University of Algiers is attractive, welcomes high-level teachers and researchers, gradually creates scientific laboratories, libraries and specialized institutes. There are also technical schools such as the Algiers School of Public Works Engineers in 1926. Like the other universities, that of Algiers has its particularities linked to its environment (studies of Muslim law, the Arabic language, geography, etc.), which also testify to the awareness that academics have of being, in Algeria, at the interface between the European world and the vast Arab-Muslim civilization.

The installation of the Free French government in Algiers in 1943 and the admission among French citizens of some 65,000 Muslims by General De Gaulle gave new importance to the University of Algiers: it was for two years the University of the capital of France. In 1945-1946, there were 360 ​​Muslim students in Algiers (out of a total enrollment of around 5,000), those in Paris more than 350, including around 100 Algerians. In 1955-56, these figures rose to 500 in Algiers (11.4% of the total), 300 in Paris, in total more than 1,400 Algerian Muslim students in all French territories. In 1961, Algerian students fell into three roughly equal groups: nearly a thousand remained at the University of Algiers (18% of the total), another thousand in France, and a third dispersed in several countries. Their growth at the University of Algiers was much faster than that of students of European origin during the 1950s: there was a tendency towards finally proportional representation to all the populations living on Algerian soil.

OAS Fire

On 7 June 1962 – just a month ahead of the Algerian independence referendum – the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), the movement of colonists opposing Algerian independence, set fire to the library building, destroying 500,000 books. The destruction of these books was seen as a scorched earth tactic across the Arab world. The effect on other countries in the region can be seen through commemorative stamps. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Algeria itself introduced stamps depicting either the burning of a book, or of the library itself. It showed the savagery of the anti-independence movement would extend to removing and indeed destroying culture so long as Algeria intended to create its own national culture.

After independence

After Algeria's independence, the university underwent a lot of redevelopment, including with the help of French aid workers (often former anti-colonialist militants). The 1971 reform of higher education, undertaken by the Algerian government, abolished (as in France at the same time) the system of Faculties and brought together the different disciplines by affinity, within the framework of Departments and Institutes. The reform decrees the progressive Arabization of disciplines, starting with certain social science lessons (initially, philosophy and history).

In 2015, faced with the dilapidated buildings, academics and intellectuals demanded "the classification of the University of Algiers in its original site of rue Didouche Mourad with its tangible and intangible heritage as a historical monument belonging to the national heritage". The Ministry of Culture granted their request on July 3, 2015.

In this same period, the University of Algiers once again becomes a technical university, which offers, among other things, mathematics and computer science, biology and physics.

Alumni

• Albert Camus (1913–1960), writer and the awardee of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
• Lakhdar Brahimi (1934), UN diplomat and Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
• Elias Zerhouni, Algerian-born American physician scientist radiologist and biomedical engineer.
• Saddek Rabah, University Professor and academic researcher.

 

An Alumnus on Wikispooks

Person	Summary	Description
Marnia Lazreg	Academic Historian	Historian with interest in the systemic function of torture

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