COLLEGE HALL REMEMBERED
(1888 - 1972)
by Henry A. Azar, MD

The first sight of College Hall was, when I first entered the campus from the Main Gate, an experience to behold. It was by far the most beautiful and the most imposing building of the university and of Ras Beirut. I was a green, eighteen-year old, French-educated youth from Aleppo, just admitted into a grueling Junior PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) pre-medical program which was then open to applicants with Part 11 French, Lebanese or Syrian baccalauréat For reasons I will explain, the College Hall of my Junior year vividly reminds me of the legendary Bayard Dodge, AUB's third President (1923-1948) and my teacher of History 332, a sweet-bitter elective course entitled "Hellenistic and Roman Civilization."

It was at College Hall that my fellow graduates and I assembled with faculty for commencement exercises, and then proudly paraded on the campus in rented second-hand caps and gowns. President Dodge "retired" as President Emeritus in 1948, the year I was granted a Bachelor's degree. For most of us, 1948 was not a happy year, nor was our commencement a source of great joy. It became obvious that an epoch had dawned and we were legitimately worried. It is also at College Hall that, under tense circumstances, two of my Medicine V classmates and I formally called on Bayard Dodge's successor, President Stephen Penrose. College Hall housed on the ground floor the President's office which students rarely had reason to visit.

As to how or why I took President Dodge's "Hellenistic and Roman Civilization," I have first to admit, with great embarrassment, that to most hardtoiling pre-medical students College Hall was thought of as the place where "soft courses," or the humanities, were given to mostly women students. All the "hard" pre-medical and medical courses were given at smaller or less impressive buildings such as Post Hall, the Chemistry Building and, of course, Van Dyck. College Hall stood up as if it were a defying haven of coeds and a coterie of intellectuals. The latter, with some exceptions, bored me to death as faculty speakers at the then required partly religious, partly civic Assembly exercises. I did not mind going two or three times a week to Assembly during my first semester at AUB, particularly that I was temporarily seated next to a lovely young lady with whom I shared a hymnal. The thought of another tedious semester of Assembly, next to a much less congenial person, became a source of some tension. So, rather hastily and without carefully weighing all the consequences, I opted to enroll, in lieu of Assembly, in History 332. This bold decision turned out to be, in the long run, strategically wise. Tactically, It was a disaster, for it could have foiled my medical career were it not for Providence and some good to excellent grades.

"Hellenistic and Roman Civilization" was given during the second semester in one of the smaller classrooms on the ground floor, north or seaside of College Hall. Not only was I awed by the fact that President Dodge was the professor giving the course but, except for me, our entire small class consisted of ladies of about my age or slightly older. There was not a single woman in all my classes of Physics, Chemistry and Biology; and, of course, none at my Aleppo Marist Brothers' collčge. Incidentally, I never suspected the existence on the top floor of College Hall of the Ladies' Lounge referred to by Leila Shaheen da Cruz in a previous issue of al-Kulliyah, (No. 3, 1995) nor do I recall wandering in the upper floors. History 332 was a rather informal seminar-type class. I distinctly remember President Dodge as a rather tall, lanky, sometimes fidgety gentleman, with somewhat shy blue eyes hiding behind his thick glasses and staring at the walls, windows, blackboard, tables and chairs but (thank you, Lord) rarely at me. He bore an almost constant, cheerful smile and conducted his classes like a benevolent coach, which he used to be, and, at times, like the first fiddler of a folk band. He expected us to do most of the talking. Occasionally, he would briefly switch to Arabic in his discussion, but I never suspected that he had seriously attempted to study our tongue. He had issued a syllabus dealing with his course, a densely condensed single-spaced synopsis, and hoped we would be reasonably acquainted in advance with the topic of the day.

President Dodge had a personal way of discussing historical personages, as if he had met them personally and recently at Marquand House or West Hall. "This fellow Brutus," he would say in a soft Levantinized Yankee twang, "may not have been as totally rotten as you may think he is." Or, "Wouldn't you want Marcus Aurelius as a pal? It would have been so nice to have him as part-time faculty or Assembly speaker!" There was a special chemistry between President Dodge and our lady students, nearly all from Ras Beirut and all quite at ease with this informality, ready to answer his queries or even debate him. I did not always catch the nuances of his half-jokes. There were smiles and giggles that went back and forth. I was shocked, disappointed, quietly furious. I now know why. I was not prepared for this form of non-painful, non-dogmatic teaching; worse, I could not accept that a revered educator, almost a secular or non-sectarian saint, could be so unassuming and so down to earth. There was also in me a strong element of false pride. I was afraid to speak during the lively exchanges at class lest my awkward accent be made fun of. Worse, all my classmates spoke a fluent English albeit spiced with a Lebanese flavor. All must have had as Juniors a background of one or two years of college English literature, drama, and miscellaneous "soft courses;" enough to give me an inferiority complex. Not once did I utter an opinion, nor even open my mouth except to breathe. For the mid-term written examination, I received an honorable C - grades were not inflated then - but, to my horror, I got 65, a D, as my final grade. I had obviously failed in class participation. President Dodge did not expect us to simply retain data and dates; he wanted us to take sides, almost any tenable side, argue, defend a viewpoint and share this with him and other students. How much I both hated and loved him! How much I envied my classmates and wished I could join their laughter!

I am now particularly proud to hold a diploma signed by Bayard Dodge. I must caution you, however, that the diploma of Bachelor of Arts in Medicine granted me in 1948 is a bizarre and anachronistic certificate, vintage AUB of that time. In order to fulfill both New York State accreditation requirements and Lebanese law, first year Medicine was considered to be a Senior year and was added to three years of college credits, while the medical curriculum was extended to five years including Medicine I! This peculiar practice is no longer in effect; pre-medical students must now obtain a Bachelor's degree before entering first year Medicine. President Dodge must have had a finger in this arrangement. He had alluded in his course to certain sensible and inevitable accommodations which had been practiced ever since antiquity. Such was the adoption of Persian customs and apparel by Alexander and his Macedonians, and the granting of Roman citizenship to non-Latins, even to non-Italians. As to President Penrose who signed my diploma of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery in 1952, I should defer to others. Unfortunately, I did not get to know him well; he died prematurely in Beirut in 1954 at the age of 46.

I was to run across President Dodge in New York in the early 1960s at a Columbia University commencement ceremony during which he was honored, among others, as a scholar and educator. Some thirty years later, as I was researching at Chapel Hill a topic of Arab medical history, I was startled to discover on the eighth floor of the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina two elegant but unused volumes entitled The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Islamic Culture, edited and translated by Bayard Dodge. ⁽²⁾ I could not believe my eyes. This critical edition is based on photocopies of various Arabic manuscripts, none complete, which the author had to piece together; it includes an excellent introductory chapter, a most detailed bibliography and biographical index, a glossary and an appendix; a total of over 1100 pages. The last sentence of Bayard Dodge's preface, signed in Princeton in 1969, three years before his death, struck me as particularly beautiful and profound. Ascribing all honor for the Fihrist to al-Nadīm, the tenth-century Arab encyclopedist of Baghdad, Bayard Dodge ended up with a quotation attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, "The ink of the learned is as precious as the blood of martyrs."

As I was watching the construction site of the new College Hall on Thursday, April 11, 1996, fire shots were suddenly heard in the direction of southwest Beirut. The work continued in spite of the vicissitudes of the moment. Obviously, no one can predict the future. I would, however, wager that the new College Hall, as the paramount symbol of the future university, will continue to uphold certain core values, long enunciated by Daniel Bliss, while adapting itself to a fast changing local and world environment.⁽³⁾ I pray that President Robert Haddad will soon occupy and enjoy his office at the new College Hall. I also hope that, in addition to some administrative offices and computer labs, there will be ample space allocated to seminar rooms. There, I picture talented and dedicated professors, including Dr. Haddad, helping young scholars, men and women - even some pre-medical and engineering students - to come out of their shells, and to share, freely and congenially, their work and views on religion, literature, history and philosophy. How I wish I could learn or teach at the new College Hall, so that I could finally overcome the stigma of that miserable D in History!

1. "Man of the Near East Renaissance", according to Jerome Beatty in Americans All Over (New York, The John Company, c1940). In Biography 1948, Bayard Dodge is described as "the teacher of sheiks, princes and prime ministers."

2. Bayard Dodge, editor and translator, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 v. (New York/London: Columbia University Press, 1970). This work constitutes No. LXXXIII of Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies edited under the auspices of the Department of History, Columbia University. Bayard Dodge acknowledges in his Preface the help of K. Zurayk, Jibrail M. Jabbur, Anis K. Frayha and other members of the faculty of AUB; of Philip Hitti, Farhat J. Ziadeh, and Samuel D. Atkins of Princeton University, and scholars from Cairo, Tihran (sic), Europe and the United States. BACK

3. For more recent works on AUB, from its beginnings to the troubled 1960s and early 1970s, consult in particular John M. Monro, A Mutual Concern: The Story of the American University of Beirut (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books 1977), and Faith M. Hanna, An American Mission: The Role of the American University of Beirut (Boston: Alphabet Press, 1979). Faith Hanna's text features footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Note also that there is a recently published inventory of Papers of Stephen B. L. Penrose, Jr. 1908-1954 (Walla Walla, Washington: Northwest and Whitman College Archives Inventory Publication # 2, 1993) which is preceded by a biographical tribute by Frances Copland Stickles. BACK