New Faculty: Hussein Shahidi

Professor Hussein Shahidi

Though new to the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Professor Hussein Shahidi is no stranger to AUB, having studied at the University as an undergraduate in the 1970s. In fact, having worked in many countries and in a number of different professions, he is a stranger to very little.

Born and raised in Iran, Shahidi left home to study electrical engineering at AUB. Returning to Iran after graduating in 1972 and finding little demand for his degree, he worked as a translator with British journalists. He soon became a journalist himself, writing for an English newspaper in Iran and, very much by chance, signed on with the BBC for over a decade. At the BBC World Service in London, where he worked for five years, and later during the six years he spent in the Central Newsroom, Shahidi developed the skills of a writer, editor, and later a trainer and teacher. Shahidi's eclectic academic and professional record never confuses him, however; he assimilates and finds connections between his many interests and experiences. While learning so much about the news business, Shahidi found himself very interested in the impact of the media on society and specifically the development of journalism in Iran. Finding himself unable to approach these subjects from within a media organization, Shahidi left the BBC in 1996 to pursue a graduate degree in journalism at St. Angelus College, Oxford University.

Professor Shahidi has trained journalists in Iran, taught radio journalism in Palestine, and spent a year and a half working in the UNIFEM office of Kabul in its first years of operation. Returning to AUB after a 28-year hiatus, he notes that one of the major changes in the University is in the educational approach, brought on by the plethora of readily available information and electronic communications that have created a challenge for both students and teachers when digging for substantive material.