What are your views on the recent ban of Coursera in countries blacklisted by the United...

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Vipul Naik

I think the ban is an immoral as well as a stupid idea. At the same time, I expect a reasonable (> 50%) chance the "ban" will be lifted (i.e., it will be clarified that MOOCs are exempt from the offering) within a few weeks.

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Jaimal Ichharam

I think it is really quite a shame that highly motivated and aspiring students in these countries will be deprived of a fantastic educational resource that has the potential to greatly improve their livelihoods. These websites were fairly new when I was in high school, but I believe that they had a strong positive impact on my academic career, pushing me to further my knowledge in both mathematics and physics, and also allowing (I believe that they played a big role in this) me to get accepted into elite universities.

By not allowing them to have access to these resources, their government is doing them a huge disservice and preventing them from taking steps to educate themselves and probably benefit the country. This is especially true when considering that by far the majority of the courses on these websites are technical and therefore not at all "brainwashing" (as these countries would see it) students with liberal or Western ideas.

At least they can still access the free online course materials on MIT OpenCourseware.

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Sam Sinai

It is blatant, immoral and stupid. It is an act of discrimination against the oppressed people of these countries. The US government claims that it is on the side of the people and democracy.Guess what? Coursera ban is just affecting those people! If the government wants the material, they will have their Ambassador send them a copy, even better, they will just use a VPN.

If Coursera was 'just for americans', one would understand that maybe they don't want to export knowledge ( which is stupid, but not this bad). But making it available to everyone BUT the people of these countries is really blatant discrimination.

I too, think that the academic nature of coursera makes the administration liberal enough to push and negotiate out of this. Because it is really a dark spot on their 'education for all' type of initiative.

One of the comments on the blog said:
"Well, I feel safer now that Iranian students cannot learn Dinosaur Paleobiology!"

I think that says it all about sanctions, they are stupid and hurt the most in need, not the government.

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