Three University Programs in Australia Honor Samir Khalaf for 50 Years of Career as Sociologist

Professor Samir Khalaf

In early April Professor Samir Khalaf, director of AUB’s Center for Behavioral Research, was the inaugural guest honored at a series of international lectures launched in Australia at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne.

During the three-day celebration Professor Khalaf offered a staff seminar, “The Pathologies of Consumerism,” in the Department of Sociology at Sydney University, followed the next day by a public lecture, “Protracted and Displaced Civil Violence,” at the Melbourne University  Center for Excellence in Islamic Studies. On the final day he offered a seminar, “The Contested Spaces in Postwar Beirut,” sponsored by the Future Generation Program, also at Melbourne University.

Speaking at the celebration, Ghassan Hage, future generation professor of anthropology and social theory in the School of Philosophy, Anthropology of Social Inquiry (PASI), at the University of Melbourne, addressed Profesor Khalaf, saying, “it had been decided to begin a series of lectures whereby Middle Eastern academics with a noted history of scholarly output are invited to Australia to familiarize the Australian academic world with their achievement. With fifty years of internationally-recognized scholarly output behind you. With your relentless commitment to the highest standards of scholarly investigation and objectivity that was remarkably maintained even in the dark years of the Lebanese civil war, we could not think of anyone more deserving of being our inaugural guest for these series of lectures. This will take a similar form to the celebration of your work and achievement that was held at Harvard University, but we feel particularly lucky that we can also celebrate the 50th anniversary of your academic career.”

Two years ago in April 2007, Professor Khalaf was similarly honored by Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies Program and the Program on Women, Gender, and Sexuality in recognition of his outstanding teaching, research, and scholarly output. The two-day event involved a public lecture and a master class during which five PhD candidates discussed various dimensions of his work in relation to urbanism, sexuality, modernity, violence, and identity.

Throughout his tenure as director of the Center for Behavioral Research Khalaf has been instrumental in securing a number of significant grants for the center to help host international conferences, support research fellows and associates from major universities around the world, supply financial aid for graduate students, and sponsor major public lectures by such luminaries as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Tony Tanner. He has also sponsored research time for faculty members, and involved AUB in the Euromed Heritage Project, which explores Mediterranean cities “with special focus on oral history and both visual and intangible culture.