In 2006, the Board of Trustees of
the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani set out to establish a
not-for-profit institution dedicated to providing a comprehensive
liberal arts education for the benefit of Kurdistan, Iraq and the wider
region.
This new university would be designed
to develop strength in critical thinking, the ability to communicate
well, a strong work ethic, good citizenship and personal integrity. They
sought to create an institution not only innovative in its teaching
methodology, but also unique in its role as an establishment of learning
unaffected by sectarian divides and affiliations,
where talented students from across the country and region would come
to learn, regardless of their ethnic, sociopolitical or economic
background.