I find this extremely implausible. I have first hand experience of the region, and I can only say that there are so many questions with such a statement.

While I do take onboard the screams of the righteous, I sometimes ask those same people to carefully consider whether or not there is even a remote possibility that alarmism has become a consistant feature in many academic domains. Besides, if I were to just let my own critical thinking collapse, for the sake of argument, I'm left to consider what course of action, practically, do we take?