Dear Friends,
October 21, 2022, marked the seventh time in my eight years at the American University of Beirut that the university held hotly contested and passionately prosecuted but free, fair, and nonviolent
student elections. The exception was the fall of 2019, when the Lebanese uprisings sparked to life on October 17, the very same day student elections were scheduled.
This year saw two independent AUB-birthed parties, Change Starts Here and the Secular Club, campaigning against student clubs with long affiliations with established political parties. It is important to acknowledge that many of those established political clubs owe much of their ideologic thought to the university and its previous faculty members. While never free of friction and verbal sparring, as befits a student body well known for its culture of spirited debate, protest, and confrontation, the elections passed peacefully.
This year, the two independent parties ended up garnering the
lion's share of elected seats. The election process itself, under the coordination of dean of
student affairs,
Nayla Al-Akl, was smooth, transparent, and secure using a hack-proof online voting system that allowed for students to vote remotely, and for results to be announced soon after voting was closed.
This annual rite of passage never grows old. Debates, campaigns, and voting are the underpinnings of the democratic process, and our students more than do their part. Whether running for the
University Student Faculty Committee (USFC), Student Representative Committee (SRC), or the leadership of political, musical, cultural, or sports clubs, our students are willing to withstand the test of public scrutiny. This is admirable in an era where many otherwise impressive leaders refuse to serve under the spotlight, unwilling to be elected but only too happy to be selected for top leadership roles across the globe.
AUB students struggle for leadership roles in the charged “republic" that is the American University of Beirut's political landscape. They are aware of the consequences of public scrutiny, but they brave the course. This is an underrated aspect of courage—holding oneself out before the judgment of others. Our students have that courage in abundance, and they understand the stakes. Our university is a bellwether for political thought across Lebanon and the region, bringing with it considerable pressure.
THIS IS AN UNDERRATED ASPECT OF COURAGE—HOLDING ONESELF OUT BEFORE THE JUDGMENT OF OTHERS. OUR STUDENTS HAVE THAT COURAGE IN ABUNDANCE…
Our students are not the only political actors in our community. Seven active faculty ran for the Lebanese parliament last spring, with five winning election. The university has produced a plethora of leaders of nations across the region and the globe, including a dozen prime ministers of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. AUB has educated more national leaders than any other university in the MENA region by far.
This is one of many reasons why the AUB student elections are so carefully awaited. No other university's student elections are so vigorously observed or dissected for clues into emerging patterns and new beginnings. The “Republic of the AUB student body," tiny as it is in number (3,625 students voted in this year's elections, or 51 percent of eligible students) is seen by many as auguring national, regional, and even super regional trends.
This is both curious and reinforcing. AUB matters to many, despite its size, reflecting the challenges of its beleaguered host nation and the many more consequential events in the world. Ours is a unique entity, but a more widely valued one precisely for that uniqueness.
Rome was famous for being the first Republic, although many of its ideas, deities, and customs derived from the Greeks. But the Romans did introduce several entirely new gods. One such innovation was Janus, a god with two faces, one looking into the past, and the other to the future. Also known as the god of beginnings, he was a uniquely political Roman god. Janus has been misrepresented in popular culture as being two-faced or hypocritical, which is a bridge too far. Janus was rather the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, and passages. AUB students, with their fresh take on political possibilities, may well be serving a similar purpose as the famed Roman Janus, heralding new beginnings in a region that badly needs newer approaches to lingering problems.
AUB STUDENTS, WITH THEIR FRESH TAKE ON POLITICAL POSSIBILITIES, MAY WELL BE SERVING A SIMILAR PURPOSE AS THE FAMED ROMAN JANUS, HERALDING NEW BEGINNINGS IN A REGION THAT BADLY NEEDS NEWER APPROACHES TO LINGERING PROBLEMS.
My longest-serving dean,
Alan Shihadeh of the
Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, has gently challenged me to quote more recent artists than the Beatles and Bob Dylan in my messages, and I accept the challenge. Lana Del Rey wrote the spellbinding “Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have" and released it in 2018. My daughter Rayya introduced it to me, and while written about a woman, the song resonates as a timely message for the beleaguered nation-state our university calls home. The closing words especially:
“They write that I'm happy, they know that I'm not
But, at best, you can see I'm not sad
But hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
But I have it
Yeah, I have it
Yeah, I have it
I have"
It remains my conviction, now more than ever, that our students herald hope for our region. No society that has so many outstanding, passionate citizen-students willing to be responsible for exercising their democratic responsibilities, should ever despair.
____
Office of the President
American University of Beirut
T +961 1 35 00 00 – Ext 2500
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