UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE: THE FUTURE
The National
9/FOREIGN/705089824/1002
May 9 2009
UAE
BEIRUT // From his fifth floor office in College Hall, Peter Dorman
has a sweeping view of the azure Mediterranean. It is perhaps a fitting
location for the 15th president of the American University of Beirut,
once one of the region’s most formative educational establishments.
Prof Dorman was inaugurated last week, kicking off a month-long series
of events commemorating AUB’s historic and political past.
But the challenges Prof Dorman faces are a world away from those
of his predecessors, including his great great grandfather, the Rev
Daniel Bliss, who founded the university in 1886.
When John Waterbury, Prof Dorman’s predecessor, took the role in 1998,
College Hall was still a building site, having been devastated by a
car bomb just after the end of the civil war in 1991.
Mr Waterbury was the first president to return to the campus after the
assassination of his predecessor, Malcolm Kerr, in 1984 apparently
by Islamic jihad militants protesting against the American military
presence in Lebanon.
By contrast, Prof Dorman, who grew up in Beirut, said he did not even
consider the security situation. "It never occurred to me, or my wife,
or my family."
AUB’s student politics were once seen as so important to American
national interests that the vice president of the CIA-funded National
Students Association was sent there in 1963.
But as Ralph Lauren-clad undergraduates swarm the spot where Leila
Khaled, a Palestinian commando notorious for successfully hijacking
a TWA plane, once gave an address, one cannot but wonder, are the
AUB’s days as the intellectual crucible of Arab politics behind it?
Headlines in the student newspaper, Outlook, which in 1974 thundered
statements like "Ready for Battle" (referring to a clash between the
student body and university authorities) are now rather less exciting:
"Survey Concludes AUB-ites Happy with Their Spending".
Established by American missionaries in the late 19th century,
the university’s non-sectarian charter and international teaching
standards soon drew students from all over the Arab world. The liberal
educational ideals of its founders also made it a unique forum for
free speech, at a time when Arab governments backed by colonial powers
were clamping down on nationalist dissent.
"The student body was very composite in those days," said Emeritus
Prof Kamal Salibi, who graduated from the AUB in 1949, and who taught
there from 1953 to 1997.
"There were people from Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi, Yemen and
Palestine. People from Iraq were able to voice opposition to British
influence here and get the cause espoused."
The first ever Arab nationalist organisation was founded at the AUB
in 1918, and the underground movement subsequently created by one
of its advisers, Constaine Zurayk, influenced a new generation of
intellectuals, who went on to play prominent roles after graduation
in their individual countries’ nationalist struggles. These included
George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, and the Kuwaiti opposition leader Ahmad al Khatib.
In the 1960s and 70s, the AUB student council was taken over by
allies of the Palestinian group Fatah, and it became a platform
for the Palestinian national struggle, clashing frequently with
authorities. In a grim foretaste of the 15-year-long civil war which
was to ensue, Rabita, an anti-Palestinian student group, attacked
Palestinian students in the university canteen with slingshots and
marbles in 1973, and armed police stormed the campus to restore order.
It is hard to imagine scenes of such violence today as students sip
their lattes beneath the pine trees.
Elections for the student body are still fought on party political
platforms. Although parties are forbidden from operating on campus,
many of the university’s social clubs have known affiliations, and
the division between the anti-Syrian March 14th alliance and the
Hizbollah centred March 8th, which has caused sporadic outbreaks of
violence in Lebanon since 2005, is reflected here. Inside the campus
walls however, there have not been any clashes.
This is partly due to the efforts of university authorities, who
forbid distribution of political materials on campus, and partly due
to the self-restraint of the students themselves.
"After the civil war, there was a sense of ‘look where all that 60s
and 70s activism got us’," said Nathalie Allam, the current editor
of Outlook.
But Allam also argued that the current political debate between March
8th and March 14th has failed to stimulate intellectual engagement
in the way that Arab nationalism and the Palestinian issue did. "A
lot of people don’t think for themselves, if you look back at old
editions of Outlook you can see people don’t argue as well as they
used to. They fall back on these clan-like positions."
Students speak of a gulf between the party-affiliated activists,
who push their party messages, and the wider student body, who are
increasingly turned off by them.
"There are two types of people, people who are affiliated with
political parties, and people who are engaged with student
politics, and we are losing the second half," said Samir Maleeb
of the Communications Club, linked to Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive
Socialist Party.
"There is no motivation any more – people just want to study."
For many AUB students, campus politics is just as uninspiring as
national politics, even against the backdrop of the forthcoming
general election in June.
"Even the new groups on the scene are led by Bashir [Gemayel]’s son,
Gibran [Tueni]’s daughter …I wouldn’t get involved in any of it,"
said Natasha Khalat, a 19 year-old business student.
Student apathy is not just a response to Lebanese politics, however.
"I think it’s because we’ve become a consumer society – people don’t
care about reading and discussion, they just care about the latest
trends. Coming to AUB is like going to a fashion show," said Allam,
in a complaint familiar to student activists across the world.
"Leftism in Lebanon has been reduced to wearing a red T-shirt."
Allam is currently running an investigation in to the cost of the
inauguration ceremony, questioning whether that money could have
been put to better use providing financial aid for students unable
to afford tuition fees (about two thirds of the students depend on
such assistance).
But, she says, "no one cares".
Although its radical fires may have been extinguished, by providing
a genuinely diverse space which is not dominated by any one sect or
party, the AUB continues to play an important role in the political
development of Lebanon’s youth.
Whereas most other institutions have a religious or sectarian
character or, in the case of the Lebanese University, are state-run,
and therefore subject to political influence, the AUB is celebrated,
even by its more radical members, for its tolerant atmosphere.
"It offers quality of education and makes every sect and social
background want to send their children there, which is why it is so
diverse," said Alamjad Salameh from the Cultural Club of the South,
a "pro-resistance" organisation with links to Hizbollah.
Rami Ollaik, now an agriculture professor at the AUB, recalled
a formative encounter with the institution’s diversity as an
undergraduate in the 1990s. "I was Hizbollah’s representative on
campus, and I wanted to turn the AUB in to a stronghold for Muslims,"
he said. Then he got involved in a coalition organising a protest
against a proposed increase in tuition fees.
"For the first time I stood against something not as a party member,
and I realised that maybe there might be a cause outside the Shia
community."
If the AUB is no longer the theatre for historical political struggles,
its pluralistic governance model and liberal educational ideals do
perhaps still exert an influence on the politics of the region.
Kamal Salibi, an unashamedly partial alumnus, believes it is still
unique in this respect. "It is the only university between Rome and
Tokyo where people are taught to think."