It is now possible for students at the University of Mostar to receive lectures from the University of Zagreb through an internet video link. This opens up the possibility for many more connections throughout the region and beyond. I'm for it.
balkania <--This is the "Balkania" tag, follow the link and see how easy it is to use!
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I have placed a balkania tag on a couple of my posts and --- nothing happened! They do not show up!
Yes, I've noticed too that the fabulous Technorati service seems not to work, so I will stop plugging it and stop using it. Seemed like a good idea.
I'm also in favor of connections, but the links between the "Sveuciliste u Mostaru" and Zagreb actually go back a dozen years -- to 1993, to be precise, when Croat nationalist militants took control of the facilities of Mostar's long-established Univerzitet "Dzemal Bijedic" on the west bank of the Neretva, kicked out the non-Croat faculty members, students and staff, and renamed the cleansed institution "Hrvatsko Sveuciliste u Mostaru." The "Hrvatsko" has since been dropped from the official name, but the institution continues to be basically mono-ethnic and continues to function as if it were an institution in Croatia, rather than in Bosnia.
Meanwhile, the old Dzemal Bijedic University has been revived on the east bank, now housed in the refurbished former Yugoslav army barracks and serving a mostly Bosniak student population. In cash-strapped Bosnia-Herzegovina, having two separate universities in one small town is an absurdity, and there have been numerous attempts, initiated by the international community, to get the two institutions to merge. These have all foundered on the insistence of the "Sveuciliste u Mostaru" and its patrons among the HDZ BiH establishment that Bosnian Croats have a "right to higher education in their own mother tongue" (i.e. the Croatian literary standard, which is the language of instruction at "Sveuciliste u Mostaru"). The notion that Mostar's Bosnian Croats speak a mother tongue different from that of non-Croat Mostar residents is of course absurd, as is so much else these days.
Before 1992, the regional archives and museum in Mostar used to publish an annual, called "Hercegovina", with articles about the region's history, antiquities, literature, and folklore. The title page of the journal alternated between Cyrillic and Latin script; in the articles, the choice of alphabets (cirilica/latinica) and linguistic standard appear to have been left up to the individual authors. Thus, there were some articles written in Latin script and using Zagreb-standard vocabulary and syntax, some articles in Cyrillic script and Belgrade-standard ekavian vocabulary, but also some articles - in Cyrillic or Latin script - with ijekavian vocabulary and local (Bosnian) usage. I'm told the same was true for the language of instruction at the university. But no more.
Which is why I'm not so sure if the ever-closer link between "Sveuciliste u Mostaru" and its counterpart in Zagreb really represents a step forward.
AR
I did suspect an ugly prehistory, but even then any link is an improvement over isolation. But it is a qeuestion of what it is used for, and whether the network wil expand.
another way of breaking isolation would be if the mostar university linked in that same way with, i dunno, university of sarajevo or banja luka first...
ludost
Sarajevo or Banja Luka would be better than Pale! It would also be worth finding out how easy or difficult it would be to develop a network that would also include international universities. I'll bet that working the way through the various university bureaucracies and finding the political will would be a much bigger challenge than getting the technology set up.
well, a certain national bureaucracy is already set up in this case; additional referring thoughts and links at http://ludost.blogger.ba/blog.php?blog=ludost&godina=2005&mjesec=01&dan=30
best from ludost!
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