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In Memoriam
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Nadim Makdisi
Nadim Makdisi, renowned journalist and cofounder of the Anis Makdisi Program
at AUB, died in his home in Washington D.C. on September 1. He was 86
years old.
Born in 1921 in New York, Makdisi was the son of the late AUB professor
Anis Makdisi and Selma Khoury.
Makdisi, who was an AUB student for a while, completed his education at
Columbia University and the American University, where he obtained a PhD
in mass communications.
His long and prolific professional career included working for Lebanese,
the Arab and American news media, including the Christian Science Monitor,
the BBC, and TeleLiban in Lebanon and creating the business and economy
magazine, Alam Attijara, one of the first business magazines to cover
stories from the Arab region.
A World War II veteran, Makdisi's adventurous spirit also had him work
as a cab driver in New York in order to discover the stories of the city.
In 1996, Makdisi established the Pauline Nadim Makdisi Memorial Endowed
Scholarship Fund at AUB, in honor of his wife, who died of cancer in 1990.
Both the Lebanese Press Federation and the Anis Makdisi Program at AUB
mourned the death of Makdisi, who cofounded the program with his brother,
AUB Economics professor and former minister Samir Makdisi.
He is survived by his sons, Anis, Richard, and Nadim; grandchildren, Michael,
James, Lina, Miles, Fadi, and, Pauline, and great-grandson, Maxwell. Memorial
services were held at Saint Alban's Church in Washington DC at 1 pm on
Saturday, September 8, 2007.
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Professor Farid Hanania
With the death of Professor Farid S. Hanania, who died in the town of
Cahors in France at the age of 98, the Arab East lost one of the most
prominent figures of education of the past century.
Professor Farid Hanania was born in Jerusalem on December 25 , 1908, to
a renowned Christian Palestinian family. He received his elementary and
secondary schooling in Saint George boarding schoo l in Jerusalem, then
traveled in 1931 in company with his friend Rajai Dajani to study in England,
where he received a degree in law from Cambridge University and became
an activist amid a small group of Arabs and Palestinians in the 1930s.
The group included Anwar Nousaibeh, Rajai Husseini, and Mohammad Najjar.
Hanania became the first Arab lawyer to join the British magistrate and
worked during World War II in the Arabic section of the BBC. After returning
to the Arab world , Hanania served as dean of AUB's Faculty of Arts and
Sciences from 1953 to 1965. He also served at AUB as an international
law teacher until 1977.
Hanania's students included personalities who later became famous, such
as George Habash, Abdul Mohsen Qattan , and the Druze leader Walid Jumblat.
Hanania's house near the seafront inside the AUB campus became a meeting
place for Arab national figures and Palestinian VIPs, as well as for British
ond American educators and senior Arab professors and researchers, such
as Walid Khalidi and Albert Hourani.
During his service at AUB as dean, Professor Hanania was able to greatly
increase the donations to AUB from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations.
This allowed AUB to consolidate its standing and reputation as the best
and most influential university in the Middle East.
Although Farid Hanania favored English culture, politically he was an
Arab nationalist and he believed that all the ills of the region came
from the partitioning of the area into nations with artificial boundaries
created by the colonial powers.
Farid Hanania is survived by his wife Pru, his son Tony who is a renowned
novelist, and his daughter Caroline, is a praduction manager who lives
in Los Angeles.
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Levon Melikian
Dr. Levon Melikian, pioneer clinical psychologist and former dean of students
at AUB, died in Toronto on August 7, 2007. He was ninety years old. Described
by President John Waterbury as one of the figures who built AUB as it
is today and who played a long and distinguished role in student life,
Dr. Melikian was very popular with his classes and with the many friends
and graduates whose lives he touched.
Levon Melikian was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, on May 17, 1917. As a
child, he attended St. George's British Missionary School in Jerusalem.
His first role as a counselor was during World War II, when he worked
for the WMCA. In 1945, at the end of the war, he sailed to the United
States aboard a returning troopship to pursue his master's degree. He
graduated in 1949 and then traveled to Lebanon to teach psychology at
AUB. In 1953 he returned to the United States for his doctoral studies
at Colombia University, where in 1955 he graduated with a PhD in clinical
psychology. He returned to AUB to serve as the dean of students and as
the university student counselor. Known for his compassion towards needy
students, Dr. Melikian frequently used his own money to help them.
In 1957, Dr. Melikian married Alice Baz Haddad, a childhood neighbor from
Jerusalem. They remained in Lebanon until the start of the Lebanese war.
Between 1975 and 1985, Dr. Melikian was a professor of psychology at the
University of Qatar. When he retired in 1985, he and his wife moved to
Toronto, Canada. Even in his retirement, many of his former students continued
to stay in touch with him, seeking his advice and guidance. Right to the
end, his door was always open.