At a new university, Syrian Kurds build their own future

Which university to attend? For Fatmah, a Kurdish college student in northern Syria, it had been an especially difficult choice.

The daughter of a welder and a housewife, she dreamed of studying construction engineering. But the stresses of the Syrian conflict – clashes in her hometown of Hassakeh between Kurdish and regime forces, attacks by Islamic State jihadists, and their entrenchment nearby – took their toll: lower grades and a failed first attempt at university entry exams.

When she passed in 2017, this time to study accounting, she “factored every scenario,” she says, sitting by a stove with family and friends.

Her first option was the government-run Euphrates University, an

The academic trenchesAnswering society’s needs‘The patriotic thing to do’