Most universities would not consider it a good year when two professors and two students had been killed in the past two months. But good is a relative term in Iraq.

This fall, the University of Baghdad “is about as normal as possible, given the circumstances,” a lecturer there told Agence France-Presse.

About 90 percent of registered students show up for class, up from 50 percent last year, says the university, though it did not note how many students are actually enrolled. And the university has filled many once-vacant faculty posts. (Since 2003, 160 professors at the university have been killed.)

“There is a tangible improvement in the security situation,” said one student. The article notes that while U.S. commanders attribute this to a surge in troops in Baghdad, others say that the city has simply completed its division into Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods and thus ethnic cleansing is less prevalent. —Beth McMurtrie