In a question-and-answer session after that followed the discussion, panelists downplayed the difficulties posed by ethnic differences, characterizing Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish tension as largely the invention of the Western media.

The panel, which was hosted by Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Research Professor Richard Wilson, did acknowledge the difficulty of rebuilding the universities in the midst of a violent insurgency that has targeted academics.

“All people who have positions in government are targeted. If we lose our professors, there will be chaos in the whole country,” Khailanym said. “We have lost quite a lot of them in the last two years.”

The panel said that the university education system must be rebuilt to sustain positive change.

“An old Swiss philosopher once said that when you open a school, you close a prison,” University of Baghdad Dean of Science Abdul Mahdi Taleb Rahmatalla said.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.