On May 19, 2012, presidential adviser and public intellectual U Myint issued a famous open letter calling for restoration of the University of Yangon to its former glory (when it was known as Rangoon University). He made a point of arguing for reconstruction of the Student Union building notoriously blown up by Ne Win on July 7, 1962, and singled out for reassembly by Dr Maung Maung in his transitory role as Burmese president during the ferment of 1988. “More than anything else, the new Student Union building will be a landmark in the national reconciliation process and it will fill a void that has been in our hearts for some time. As in the past, it will provide a place where our young people can gather, engage in free debate and discussion, and in keeping with our tradition, they will be encouraged to play an effective role in the nation building task that lies ahead.”

Currently, there’s no sign that a Student Union building will reappear on campus anytime soon. That apart, the university is undergoing an impressive array of restoration activity. One key driver is Aung San Suu Kyi, who chairs parliamentary committees on higher education law and, specifically, UY revitalization. She both mobilizes domestic opinion, and appeals for international support. When awarded an honorary degree by the University of Oxford in June 2012, for instance, she made a direct request for bilateral engagement. Another significant actor is Open Society Foundations, boosted by Myanmar trips taken by George Soros from late 2011 onwards. About 20 other development partners are also involved. Equally important is the willingness of major global players such as Australian National University, Columbia University and the University of Oxford (and a raft of slightly lesser institutions) to step up to the plate. Plus, of course, there is less visible, less heralded work undertaken on campus every day of the week by UY academics and administrators, many of whom gain valuable overseas experience through visiting fellowship schemes. From international relations and law, for example, faculty members are serially spending three months each at Central European University in Budapest. Put together, these activities amount to a quite remarkable joint effort.

The chances are, then, that no more than a few years from now UY will be a globally-networked institution of higher education offering high-quality programmes to outstanding students. Already eLibrary Myanmar provides access to a superb range of online resources: more than 10,000 academic journals, and around 130,000 books. ANU also has a major collaboration, funded by the Australian government, seeking to build capacity in law, demography and international relations. Before long Columbia will be working on projects addressing human rights and the rule of law, and spreading into other areas. Oxford will have a campus presence focused chiefly on constitutional law. And so on through initiatives large and small underpinned by memoranda of understanding with universities from all over the world.

Restoring UY to its former glory, and in tandem bringing Mandalay University up to a near-equivalent standard, will deliver on one part of Myanmar’s higher education reform agenda – building peak institutions that are internationally excellent. That’s terrific – but there’s also much that needs to be done beyond these two elite institutions to make decent tertiary education an option for the mass of the people.

At the Social Science Curriculum Group Meeting at the end of last week, my main role was to participate in a working group looking at curriculum development for Myanmar’s nascent political science programme. In one form or another, this discipline was taught in Burma from 1920, when Rangoon University was formed, to 1962, when the Ne Win coup subjected universities to tight control. From 1962 to 1974, the Revolutionary Council dispensed with broad-based political science and promoted the teaching of socialism. From 1974 to 1988, socialism was made a compulsory course on all campuses. In both periods, the aim was clearly to brainwash through propaganda. In 1988, all universities were closed following mass pro-democracy protests led by students. When they were permitted to reopen in the 1990s, political science had no formal place in the curriculum.

In fact, though, some aspects of the broad discipline continued to be taught sporadically to masters students enrolled by departments of international relations formed in 1984 on the main Rangoon and Mandalay campuses. Subsequently, several other universities created in the 1990s were allowed to offer international relations courses or programmes to undergraduate students. Finally, in December 2013, the University of Yangon and Mandalay University were both given the green light to admit up to 50 students to each of 20 specified undergraduate programmes. Among them were separate programmes in international relations and political science. At both institutions, second cohorts will be enrolled in December.

Today, then, only UY and MU offer degrees in political science. With required matriculation scores of 470 out of 600, entrance to both programmes is extremely difficult and the resultant first-year cohorts, though small (in the mid-40s), are elite. These two universities also have parallel first-year cohorts in international relations (required matriculation score: 475). Overwhelmingly, students across these programmes are female.

Beyond the top two campuses, just a few other universities offer undergraduate degrees in international relations. In Lower Myanmar, focused on UY, they are Dagon University and East Yangon University. In Upper Myanmar, focused on MU, they are Monywa University and Yadanabon University (located in Amarapura, near Mandalay). At these universities, the cohorts are bigger: around 150 in East Yangon, for instance, and around 300 in Yadanabon. Finally, Yangon University of Foreign Languages and Mandalay University of Foreign Languages both teach a third-year international relations course, which though billed as elective is in fact mandatory. On each campus, lectures and tutorials are given separately to different language streams. At YUFL, the third-year cohort totals some 500 students taking eight languages.

Slowly, then, political science is being rebuilt in Myanmar. Indeed, to train up an outstanding corps of future political leaders and administrators, the government grants to the very best UY and MU students a stipend of roughly $100 a month, which is available for a total of nine years covering undergraduate, masters and doctoral studies. At MU, 14 political science majors and 28 international relations majors currently hold this award. Moreover, an idiosyncracy of the transitional period is that democracy has shifted, in the space of no more than a few years, from being a bad word to being a buzzword. When parliamentarians inquire into the shared political science curriculum being built at YU and MU, they make a point of ensuring that democracy is fully present. It’s all part of the new Myanmar.

In the two weeks to this past weekend, I participated in a couple of fascinating and stimulating events on higher education reform. The first was the Global Education Dialogue – Myanmar, which took place at Park Royal Hotel, Yangon on July 4-5, and was co-sponsored by the British Council and UNESCO. The second was a Social Science Curriculum Working Group Meeting, co-hosted by the University of Yangon and Mandalay University, animated by Open Society Foundations, and held on campus at UY on July 16-18. Together, they gave me a chance to take stock of where things stand in this critical sector, notably in the realm of teaching and learning.

Looking first at basic data, Myanmar currently has either 168 or 169 public universities (nobody can be sure) grouped together under 12 (or maybe 13) line ministries. As yet, there are no private universities. At the heart of the system are 47 universities reporting to the Ministry of Education. They range across the arts and sciences, foreign languages, teacher training, economics and distance education. UY and MU are dominant, but for political reasons neither engages much with teaching and learning. Key providers are thus found elsewhere – in new universities built mainly in the 1990s on the margins of urban areas, and in two universities of distance education, each with a series of satellite campuses. In Lower Myanmar, focused on Yangon University of Distance of Education, there are 15 teaching centres with a total of 150,000 students. In Upper Myanmar, focused on Mandalay University of Distance Education, there are 20 teaching centres also with 150,000 students. When all programmes at all tertiary institutions are put together, roughly 1 million students are registered in Myanmar.

Reform dates from 2011, when modernization of higher education was made one of three national priorities, and more fully from 2012, when the MoE launched the Comprehensive Education Sector Review. The ministry coordinates input from other government agencies, and is supported by an array of development partners. Parallel work is undertaken by the National Network for Education Reform, a civil society group led by the NLD that brings together academics, teachers and students. A key moment in shaping a growing CESR/NNER rivalry came on October 7, 2013, when President Thein Sein attended a Naypyitaw seminar on pragmatic education reform, triggering formation of the Education Promotion Implementation Committee. EPIC quickly eclipsed all other activity and became the new reform driver. It is much closer to the government’s CESR than to the NLD’s NNER. Among 18 EPIC working groups is one dealing with higher education. In draft at present are a national education law, a higher education law, and a private universities law.

As of now, perhaps the most important reformist aim is to sever MoE and other line ministry control of universities. This regulates everything from student enrolment to curriculum design to faculty recruitment, which is managed through a general transfer system that sees academics regularly rotated from one campus to another. University autonomy is therefore a core demand, and is likely to be delivered in some form around the end of this year. Enhanced institutional freedom could lead to new modes of student recruitment (shifting from matriculation scores to university entrance exams), experimentation in curriculum design, and better human resource management. Conceivably, it could also foment a process of institutional consolidation. Within universities, departments could be gathered into faculties. Across the sector, excessive fragmentation (mandated for public security reasons) could be reversed as universities are stitched back into something resembling their former shapes. That, though, will be a difficult and lengthy task.

Higher education reform is gathering speed in Myanmar. Over the next few days I plan to look at several aspects in greater detail.

Also on refugees, but not directly related to Myanmar, is a recent New York Times op-ed by Sonia Nazario. The central claim is that what the US faces on its southern border with Mexico is not an immigration crisis, as many in Congress and the media would have us believe, but rather a refugee crisis. Among much else, Nazario has this to say: “The United States expects other countries to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds. Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United States has received in an entire month during the height of this immigration flow – more than 9,000 children in May. The United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current 70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit that many.”

That’s a reasonable argument, indicating that Thailand deserves a fair hearing from international society as it reimposes a strict interpretation of the rules on its borderland refugee camps, and in the slightly longer term seeks global support in managing an unfolding endgame. Indeed, it seems almost certain that the US will have to be part of any final settlement. The limited data we have reveals that around 90 percent of refugees prefer either to stay in Thailand, or to be resettled. Only with US participation could a total of third-country slots running to several tens of thousands be reached.

On the subject of refugee camps on the Thai-Myanmar border, I very much welcome the publication, in May, of Kirsten McConnachie’s Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism. I haven’t yet read the book, and in fact knew nothing about it until a couple of weeks ago when the Irrawaddy carried a review by Jack Dunford, from 1984 to 2012 executive director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (now TBC). It looks fabulous, and as the review argues is surely a must-read for anyone interested in the camps at the time when they are about to pass into history.

Dunford’s review is laudatory: “‘Governing Refugees’ is an outstanding study of Karen refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border and the unique humanitarian assistance model that enabled refugees not only to survive protracted encampment with dignity for 30 years, but also to maintain and strengthen community structures – structures that potentially have crucial roles to play in resolving conflict in Burma and in rehabilitating the war-torn ethnic border states.” He refers to one strand of criticism long directed at the camps – that they facilitated refugee militarization, consolidated the power of the Karen National Union, and contributed to prolongation of the conflict with the Myanmar tatmadaw. Other negatives, notably the corruption found at one level or another in all the camps, are not mentioned. I’ll need to read the book myself to discover whether it examines abuse of the registration system, financial irregularities, drug dealing and illegal work outside the camps.

Still, the key point is that this sphere of Myanmar politics, so critical yet so neglected, has finally gained close academic attention. Dunford writes that “McConnachie’s book provides an excellent and balanced starting point for discussion and debate”. That can only be good.

First established a few years before a formal military directorate seized power in Burma in 1988, the refugee camps strung along Thailand’s western frontier quickly became a defining feature of Myanmar under its junta. Symbolizing all that was amiss with a nation cut off from much of the rest of the world and visibly forcing out tens of thousands of citizens, they also provided some of the few access points to eastern parts of the country peopled mainly by minority ethnic groups. In short, the camps have long been an integral part of Myanmar’s political landscape. Now, however, it looks like quite rapid change is in prospect.

Following the Thai coup of May 22, 2014, news reports soon indicated that this military regime was likely to have a greater impact on regional relations than its immediate predecessor created in September 2006. In the southeast, for example, a period of no more than a month saw maybe a quarter of a million migrants move back across the Cambodian border. Prime Minister Hun Sen claimed the influx had hit his country like a “flash flood”. Today arrangements are being made to stabilize the situation and return workers to their jobs, preferably on a legal basis. Nevertheless, there has been clear disruption.

Along the Thai-Myanmar border, the knock-on effects are likely to be even greater. Two weeks ago, Thailand’s National Council for Peace and Order locked down the nine refugee camps, imposing a general travel ban and a dusk-to-dawn curfew. At the same time, it expelled foreign aid workers and called to camp anyone claiming refugee status. Currently it is undertaking a full registration exercise that has nothing to do with UNHCR procedures, but is rather a strictly Thai audit. Although discussions also opened between the Thai authorities and aid agencies grouped around The Border Consortium, they were cast in a new light by the announcement on Monday that the junta intends to close the camps.

Last week I travelled up the border from Mae Sot to Mae Tan and beyond, on the way passing Mae La, the biggest of the refugee camps. Certainly security was tighter, and activity along the road was reduced. Students on my MOEI programme, which every year since 2008 has taken interns and volunteers to teach English to refugees and migrants living in and around Mae Sot, had been required to leave Mae La along with every other foreigner.

It is still early days, and from time to time over the past three decades there have been other flare-ups. Nevertheless, with Myanmar now officially democratic and the Thai military elite apparently determined to shut the camps, it seems that this time things will be very different. In these circumstances, attention must turn to ensuring the process unfolds with as much sensitivity as possible to the basic needs and expressed desires of the estimated 120,000 refugees.

Last week the UN released the 2014 revision of World Urbanization Prospects, a publication produced regularly by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in the UN Secretariat. It makes for fascinating reading. Today, 54 percent of the global population lives in urban areas, compared with only 30 percent in 1950 and a projected 66 percent in 2050. There are now 28 mega-cities each with more than 10 million inhabitants, and three from Asia head the list: Tokyo (38 million), Delhi (25 million), and Shanghai (23 million). However, most people do not live in places such as these. Rather, nearly half of all urban dwellers are found in relatively small settlements of fewer than 500,000 residents. The world’s fastest-growing urban zones are medium-sized cities in Asia and Africa. Policy implications focus on equitable and sustainable growth of urban areas, and careful management of the spatial distribution of populations and internal migration. Myanmar has participated in some of these trend changes, and looks certain to engage with them more fully in the years ahead.

“Most social science research confirms the blindingly obvious. But sometimes it reveals things nobody had thought of, or suggests that the things we thought were true are actually false.” That’s David Brooks, to my mind the best columnist in the business these days. One non-obvious conclusion reported by him in the New York Times affirms a well-known axiom that is, however, rarely cited in the conflict resolution literature: good fences make good neighbours. This is how he tells it:

“When ethnic groups clash, we usually try to encourage peace by integrating them. Let them get to know one another or perform a joint activity. This may be the wrong approach. Alex Rutherford, Dion Harmon and others studied ethnically diverse areas and came to a different conclusion. Peace is not the result of integrated coexistence. It is the result of well-defined geographic and political boundaries. For example, Switzerland is an ethnically diverse place, but mountains and lakes clearly define each group’s spot. Even in the former Yugoslavia, amid widespread ethnic violence, peace prevailed where there were clear boundaries.”

The passage is arresting, and the topic is very much relevant to Myanmar – so I decided to check out the social science behind it. The article in question certainly does contain this argument. But it actually makes a more nuanced case, holding that the conditions most conducive to peace have two components: “well mixed and well separated”. That is, both cooperation and partition (through administrative or natural barriers) contribute to social harmony. That’s somewhat different from the starker version presented by Brooks.

My own reading is that distinct social groups all need a safe place to call home – which involves marking territory clearly. Otherwise insecurity fosters tension, and that in turn generates friction and violence. But there must always be contact too, meaning that separation should never be pushed too far. As it happens, the New York Times right now is carrying an article on what can transpire when partition becomes the sole policy tool. Written by Ethan Bronner, it focuses on the situation of Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. I could take many paragraphs from this excellent piece, but find this one particularly appealing:

“The French philosopher Ernest Renan once defined a nation as ‘a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors.’ And while that arguably applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, my sense is that the deterioration we are witnessing results from something else – the growing human distance between Israelis and Palestinians who once knew each other intimately and are now virtual strangers.”

In Myanmar, religious communities are currently being actively driven apart. Thomas Fuller’s latest dispatch, also in the New York Times, looks at the worrying situation in Mandalay 10 days or so after anti-Muslim riots disfigured the city. For this troubled country, building good fences is not the priority. Rather, doing everything possible to reduce the growing gulf between Buddhists and Muslims is the most urgent task.

In last week’s New York Times, Angelina Draper had a useful article about Myanmar’s smartphone apps and services. With broadband costing $500 to install and $70-120 per month to run, many people access the internet via a smartphone (usually Android-based). That trend will intensify later this year when Ooredoo and Telenor roll out 3G services, and prices fall dramatically. Cellphone usage, estimated at 10 percent of the population in 2011 and 27 percent in 2013, is targeted to reach 80 percent by 2016.

This much is well known. What interests me is Draper’s report on a couple of smartphone app initiatives now taking place. In March, David Madden, founder of Code for Change Myanmar, invited developers to join a social innovation competition. The winning entry was an Android app designed to transmit pest and disease alerts around farming communities. Next month Revo Tech, founded by Myo Myint Kyaw, will launch a proprietary app enabling users to learn the Myanmar script by tracing letters on-screen.

The mobile phone revolution that will sweep Myanmar just a few months from now is certain to generate immense opportunity for social gain – in basic education and in so many other spheres. Both state and aid agencies need to be alive to the possibilities about to open up.

The final point I want to take from Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nehru Lecture is simple. Noting that fraternal ties developed by anti-colonial movements in Burma and India in the 1930s were loosened in the early 1940s when Burmese patriots, led by her father, diverged from Gandhi’s path of non-violence, she describes one of the postwar occasions when links were rebuilt. This was an address of welcome delivered by Aung San at a reception for Sarat Chandra Bose, elder brother of Indian nationalist leader Subheads Chandra Bose, at Rangoon City Hall on July 24, 1946. The Bogyoke considered it sufficiently important to include in a booklet of speeches brought together that same month under the title Burma’s Challenge.

In his oration, Aung San sketched a vision of regional unity that remains interesting 70 years on. Reflecting Britain’s still unfinished imperial adventure, he placed Burma in a South Asian rather than Southeast Asian orbit – in 1946, of course, India comprised almost all of today’s South Asia, including Bangladesh and Pakistan. Surely conscious of inter-communal tension in Burma during the preceding decade, he nevertheless looked forward to a period of harmony between peoples he unhesitatingly identified as distinct races. In the original speech, rather than the excerpted passage used by Aung San Suu Kyi, he held that “our policy towards India and Indians in Burma is one of the broadest conception and generosity”. He continued with a ringing statement:

“We have no axe to grind, we nurture no feelings of racial bitterness and ill will. We stand for friendly relations with any and every nation in the world. Above all, and after all, we stand for more than friendly relations with our neighbours. We want to be not merely good neighbours, but good brothers even, the moment such course should become possible. We stand for an Asiatic Federation in a not very, very remote future, we stand for immediate mutual understanding and joint action, wherever and whenever possible, from now for our mutual interests and for the freedom of India, Burma and indeed all Asia. We stand for these, and we trust Indian national leaders in India implicitly.”