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| AUB gives out first honorary
doctorates since 1969 Recipients include Edward Said and Amin Maalouf |
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| Paul Cochrane Special to The Daily Star Putting the American University of Beirut (AUB) back on the international academic scene as a center of excellence, the university awarded six honorary doctorates for the first time in over 30 years Saturday. Held at AUB’s Assembly Hall at midday amid tight security and by invitation only, the AUB revived, under President John Waterbury’s initiative, a program that was first established in 1890. The event was of importance to the university’s reputation, as no honorary doctorates in humane letters have been awarded since 1969. The awards were given to Edward Said, Amin Maalouf, Carlos Ghosn, Hasib Sabbagh, Helen Thomas, and Lakhdar Brahimi. During the ceremony, the recipients and president Waterbury emphasized the importance of AUB and Lebanon in linking the United States and the Middle East, with Waterbury commenting that “the amount of talent that Lebanon has exported to the world is more than the worth of oil in the region.” Sana Sabbagh, speaking on behalf of her incapacitated father, Hasib, chairman and co-owner of Consolidated Contractors International (CCI), said that “AUB is unique in contributing to such an endeavor in uniting the USA and the Middle East.” Palestinian born Hasib Sabbagh received a doctorate in business, his second degree from AUB, having graduated in civil engineering in 1941. CCI is listed 14th out of 225 contractors worldwide, with Sabbagh an important philanthropist to universities and the Palestine cause. Brazilian-born Carlos Ghosn, of Lebanese descent and currently president and chief executive office of Nissan Motor Company, also received a business doctorate. He praised the “revival of a tradition at such an outstanding institution,” and asserted the importance of education in helping him attain an extremely successful career in the automobile industry. “Education is a passport to the future,” he said. Said, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and acclaimed thinker and writer, received his 15th honorary doctorate by accepting AUB’s doctorate of academia. Said commented that the award reinserted the importance of humanities in an academic world that is increasingly focused on defense, business and corporate subjects. He also acknowledged the special role AUB played in cultural and academic understanding in the Middle East and the world at large, and expressed hope for the country and region’s prospects, asserting his perpetual message of the need for humanism. Hope for the future was a central element in all the recipients’ speeches, which a member of the audience described, after the ceremony, as “inspirational.” Amin Maalouf, Lebanese-born journalist, renowned novelist, and winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for Le Rocher de Tanios, talked of hope as “the precious fuel of the flesh,” highlighting the “banquet of life” as an inspiration for his work. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in arts and letters. Helen Thomas, receiving a doctorate in the field of the media, asserted that “America will be great again when it recognizes the greatness of the Arab world.” Thomas, born in Winchester, Kentucky to Syrian/Lebanese parents, is an illustrious and still-active journalist, even at 82, and known as the “doyenne” of the White House press corps. She has covered nine US presidents, from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, and was the only print journalist to accompany then-President Richard Nixon on his groundbreaking trip to China in 1972. She described the raison d’etre of presidential reporting as to “confront the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” Thomas is the first woman to receive an honorary degree from AUB, and it was her 27th honorary doctorate. Algerian Lakhdar Brahimi, envoy of the Tripartite Committee which helped mediate the 1989 Taif Accords that ended the Lebanese civil war and currently the special representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for Afghanistan, was honored with a doctorate in public affairs for his influential role in peacekeeping. Waterbury, in his introductory speech, remarked that if a definitive work of peacekeeping were to be published, it would be by Brahimi. The degree was Brahimi’s first, having not completed his university studies due to representing the Algerian National Liberation Front in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1956 to 1961. He talked of the troubles and problems that still exist in Afghanistan, and highlighted the role AUB is playing in the country through alumni involved in politics, medicine and business in Kabul. On a diplomatic note, he commented that “America is still out there for us,” with AUB “a model of cooperation between the USA and Arab and Muslim world.” The ceremony was concluded with final words by president Waterbury, the singing of AUB’s anthem, and an exit down the aisle by senior AUB figures and the recipients. Somewhat bizarrely, contrary to other major universities’ emphasis on universal educational recognition, the ceremony was held separately from that of the students’ graduation. But perhaps, as Ghosn said, “life is its own university,” and it is not necessarily recognition that is always of the essence, but of contributing to the world, be it in business, academia or writing amidst “cultural and political distortions,” as Sabbagh expressed it. |
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