Students, faculty and staff of AUB; alumni and friends of AUB; ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to you all.
The beginning of a new academic year should be a time of excitement and high expectations. This new academic year is no exception. Our students are here in record numbers; our faculty is assembled. Our classrooms and laboratories are ready to support our academic mission. Our campus is as beautiful as ever, looking out on the same calm, blue Mediterranean that the ancients knew and revered.
Yet we all feel, in varying degrees, uncertainty, confusion, anger, sorrow, and even fear. And well we should. But, my friends, my message today is that it is precisely in such times as these that the university must rise to meet the occasion, to assert itself as the place to seek understanding, to examine and debate the issues, to explore the bases of our fears and apprehensions, to try--above all to try--to bring clarity of thinking and some sense of moral order to a world that sometimes defies comprehension.
It was not so long ago that we were celebrating the millennium, dreaming of a new era loaded with the potentialities that a technological and informatics revolution has engendered. Our biggest global problem only a year and a half ago was the Y2K challenge. That challenge was at least a challenge worthy of a new era. But what the last year has brought are crises that smell more of the dark ages than of a new age of enlightenment.
A year ago, I stood here on the same occasion only a few days after the beginning of the second intifada. We did not know then just how ghastly would be the development of the conflict in the occupied territories, but I knew that the events then unfolding took precedence over messages of good cheer and institutional happiness at the beginning of a new year.
What have we seen in these past twelve months? We have seen images and scenes wildly different in outward appearance but linked profoundly in their essence. We remain riveted by the image of Muhammed al-Durra and his father, pinned down by Israeli fire for hours before finally being killed. We saw slow death of an innocent child. We saw the remains of the swift and violent deaths of many Israelis at a Pizza Hut in Jerusalem at the hands of a suicide bomber. We saw Israeli helicopter gun ships hovering over the cities of the West Bank, unleashing massive fire power against targets in areas inhabited by Palestinian civilians. Then, only a few weeks ago, we had the vivid images of an event never before witnessed--two commercial jet airliners crashing into two of the tallest buildings on earth, the workplace of over 50,000 people.
We often speak of "the street" in this part of the world, the people, the sha'ab, the average working folks so often overlooked by their own governments. Well, my friends, the word from the street is disquieting. Not long ago I read that 75 percent of Israelis polled approve of state-sponsored assassination. I read that 75 percent of Palestinians polled approve of suicide bombers. And now, last week, I read that 92 percent of Americans polled approve of a war, even at the cost of thousands of US casualties. Welcome to the 21st first century. Welcome to the millennium.
These scenes of carnage and horror raise profound moral and philosophical questions. Is one kind of death more worthy or more shocking than another? Is the slow personalized death of Muhammed al-Durra more or less deplorable than the sudden and mass deaths of the thousands in the Trade Center?
The media are full of the question: What is a terrorist? Should we also not ask, "What is an innocent civilian" Are any of us here today innocent? Most of us would concede that a child is intrinsically innocent. But when does a child cease to be a child? When do we civilians cease to be innocent? It may be that in a globalized, inter-connected world, no adult can plead innocence; no adult can say, "I didn't know." My friends, in the long run, that loss of innocence, that interconnectedness, may be the ultimate significance of globalization, and I for one welcome it.
Let AUB be a center for discussing and debating these issues--not just our philosophers, historians, and political scientists, but everyone, everywhere in our academic institution. These are not questions for specialists. These are questions for us all. It is to seek understanding of such issues that universities exist in the first place. I urge my colleagues, I urge students and their clubs and associations, to be active in engaging these questions. Let us be a forum in which those within our walls and those outside them can try to make sense of the unnerving challenges facing us.
I want to shift focus for a moment and ask you to be, with me, a distant witness to events of September 11. I was in the United States at that time. In fact, I was in Princeton, New Jersey where I resided for many years and where I still have a home. I frequently take the train from Princeton to New York to go to AUB's office in mid-town Manhattan. I generally take the 6 am train from Princeton, arriving in Pennsylvania Station in New York a little after 7 am.
It was an interesting train, filled with commuters to businesses and jobs in New York. Over the years the background of the passengers has changed, with growing numbers of Indians, Chinese, Hispanics, and, indeed, Egyptians and Lebanese, gradually displacing the older pattern of those of Italian, Irish, and other European backgrounds. Despite all the different physical features, most passengers are fairly young, typically in their 30s and 40s, well educated, many with MBAs or law degrees. They are the so-called dot com generation, moving up the ladder in the financial services sector of Manhattan. Whatever their background they read professional journals or they work on their laptops as the train proceeds toward New York.
After Princeton there is New Brunswick, home of Rugters University, where our own Imad Nuwayhid is spending the year. Many people get on there; then Edison and Metuchen, where passengers of Indian extraction board, and the train proceeds through Elizabeth, where I was born, and then to Newark where much more than half the passengers get off. At Newark these passengers board a special train that takes them directly to the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
The morning of September 11 was beautiful; it was clear, dry, and a little bit cool. As the train left Newark, having let off half its passengers to travel on to the World Trade Center, it goes across the meadowlands, wide flat marshes. Across the marshes the skyline of Manhattan was silhouetted in the rising sun. I anticipated a wonderful day in the city. I took the subway from Pennsylvania Station to the corner of Lexington and 51st Street. I walked by the fire department on the same street. The firemen, big, beefy men, sometimes not in the best physical shape, were standing around in front of the station, drinking coffee and sharing jokes and banter.
At 8 am I began a meeting in the AUB office. At around 9 am Eileen O'Connor, who manages that office, interrupted my meeting to tell me that a plane had crashed into one of the trade towers. The fire alarms began to sound immediately, and I could hear the fire trucks pulling away from the fire station to head downtown. As all of us in the office sought for news, the second plane struck. You all know the rest of the story.
Late in the afternoon of the 11th I was lucky to catch one of the few trains allowed to leave New York. The train was packed with dazed and silent passengers standing and sitting on top of one another. The train came out of a tunnel that runs beneath the Hudson River, and we were once again moving across the marshes toward Newark. Manhattan lay to our left across the marshes. All the passengers, knowing what they would see if they looked left, looked in the opposite direction. No one spoke. I thought to myself that the train I had taken that morning was the train of death. The next morning I returned to Manhattan. I walked by the same fire department. It had lost ten of its men in the rescue effort. I passed fire trucks covered in grey ash and dust. Some firemen stood in front of the station looking shaken and exhausted. They too were covered in grey ash and dust.
About five days later, when international air travel resumed, I headed for Kennedy Airport by car to come back to Beirut. About two miles from Princeton there is a mosque on Route One, also the headquarters of the Muslim Association of Central New Jersey. As I went by the mosque I saw that its faithful had hung a large American flag on the outer wall. There were two police cars parked in the parking lot. Not far from that mosque there is a large Egyptian Coptic church. Between the two is one of the largest automobile dealerships in New Jersey--Malouf's. These manifestations of religion and commerce, of new blood and ancient cultures, have become fully part of our lives in New Jersey. I remember talking to a state policeman who every year had to guide the heavy traffic coming to the mosque for the 'Id al-Adha. Over the years he learned a good deal about the great Islamic feasts, the times of prayer, and the proper behavior of men and women. There was nothing unusual or exotic about it so far as he was concerned; it was simply part of the job and part of life in central New Jersey.
Why do I tell you all this? I am not exactly sure myself, but I think it is because all these events and scenes that we have witnessed from near or from far make me feel our common links, our shared fears and hopes, our common humanity. These scenes and acts are not senseless, not random, not without cause. When we realize that the violence and terror are not blind, not inexplicable, that no matter how tangled and twisted the roots, they can be traced back to real situations and real grievances, then our common plight will become clearer. Some part of all of us was with Muhammed al-Durra under fire; some part of all of us was with those well educated commuters from all parts of the globe who went off to work and off to their deaths.
I come back almost to where I began--to the university and its role and obligations in these circumstances. Remember the words of Ecclesiastes 3:
"To everything there is a season:
a time to keep silence
and a time to speak
a time to love
and a time to loathe
a time of strife
and a time of peace"
The sacred texts tell us that it is human to hate, human to crave revenge, indeed, human to kill. But a university, like a mosque, or a church, or a temple must lift us above our humanness and connect us to our humanity. A university, this university can never condone, no less encourage blind appeals to violence, vengeance, and hate. It must constantly remind the humans who live in it and around it of their humanity. In this world where, for good or ill, we are one, if we are tempted to protest our innocence, to ask, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" at those moments, let us recall the pledge and the promise, old as human kind: "I am my brother's keeper"--and, might I add, "my sister's keeper" too?
AUBites and friends, in my office in College Hall I have hung a beautiful example of Arabic calligraphy. It contains a very good piece of advice. It is probably significant that I have hung that piece of advice behind my desk where I do not see it and thus occasionally ignore it. It is from a hadith, attributed to the Prophet, may the peace be upon Him. It says:
According to Abu Huraira, a man said:
"O Prophet of God. Counsel me, but do not heap words upon me lest I forget." The Prophet said, "Do not get angry."
A university is not just a place to make a living. It is not just a place to acquire the skills to make a living. It is a joyful responsibility. Let us step away from our desks and computers and recommit ourselves to that lofty task.

Back to Home Page