BEIRUT // From his fifth floor office in College Hall, Peter Dorman has a sweeping view of the azure Mediterranean. It is perhaps a fitting location for the 15th president of the American University of Beirut, once one of the region's most formative educational establishments. Prof Dorman was inaugurated last week, kicking off a month-long series of events commemorating AUB's historic and political past.
But the challenges Prof Dorman faces are a world away from those of his predecessors, including his great great grandfather, the Rev Daniel Bliss, who founded the university in 1886. When John Waterbury, Prof Dorman's predecessor, took the role in 1998, College Hall was still a building site, having been devastated by a car bomb just after the end of the civil war in 1991. Mr Waterbury was the first president to return to the campus after the assassination of his predecessor, Malcolm Kerr, in 1984 apparently by Islamic jihad militants protesting against the American military presence in Lebanon.
By contrast, Prof Dorman, who grew up in Beirut, said he did not even consider the security situation. "It never occurred to me, or my wife, or my family." AUB's student politics were once seen as so important to American national interests that the vice president of the CIA-funded National Students Association was sent there in 1963. But as Ralph Lauren-clad undergraduates swarm the spot where Leila Khaled, a Palestinian commando notorious for successfully hijacking a TWA plane, once gave an address, one cannot but wonder, are the AUB's days as the intellectual crucible of Arab politics behind it?
Headlines in the student newspaper, Outlook, which in 1974 thundered statements like "Ready for Battle" (referring to a clash between the student body and university authorities) are now rather less exciting: "Survey Concludes AUB-ites Happy with Their Spending". Established by American missionaries in the late 19th century, the university's non-sectarian charter and international teaching standards soon drew students from all over the Arab world. The liberal educational ideals of its founders also made it a unique forum for free speech, at a time when Arab governments backed by colonial powers were clamping down on nationalist dissent.
"The student body was very composite in those days," said Emeritus Prof Kamal Salibi, who graduated from the AUB in 1949, and who taught there from 1953 to 1997. "There were people from Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi, Yemen and Palestine. People from Iraq were able to voice opposition to British influence here and get the cause espoused." The first ever Arab nationalist organisation was founded at the AUB in 1918, and the underground movement subsequently created by one of its advisers, Constaine Zurayk, influenced a new generation of intellectuals, who went on to play prominent roles after graduation in their individual countries' nationalist struggles. These included George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Kuwaiti opposition leader Ahmad al Khatib.
In the 1960s and 70s, the AUB student council was taken over by allies of the Palestinian group Fatah, and it became a platform for the Palestinian national struggle, clashing frequently with authorities. In a grim foretaste of the 15-year-long civil war which was to ensue, Rabita, an anti-Palestinian student group, attacked Palestinian students in the university canteen with slingshots and marbles in 1973, and armed police stormed the campus to restore order.
It is hard to imagine scenes of such violence today as students sip their lattes beneath the pine trees. Elections for the student body are still fought on party political platforms. Although parties are forbidden from operating on campus, many of the university's social clubs have known affiliations, and the division between the anti-Syrian March 14th alliance and the Hizbollah centred March 8th, which has caused sporadic outbreaks of violence in Lebanon since 2005, is reflected here. Inside the campus walls however, there have not been any clashes.
This is partly due to the efforts of university authorities, who forbid distribution of political materials on campus, and partly due to the self-restraint of the students themselves. "After the civil war, there was a sense of 'look where all that 60s and 70s activism got us'," said Nathalie Allam, the current editor of Outlook. But Allam also argued that the current political debate between March 8th and March 14th has failed to stimulate intellectual engagement in the way that Arab nationalism and the Palestinian issue did. "A lot of people don't think for themselves, if you look back at old editions of Outlook you can see people don't argue as well as they used to. They fall back on these clan-like positions."
Students speak of a gulf between the party-affiliated activists, who push their party messages, and the wider student body, who are increasingly turned off by them. "There are two types of people, people who are affiliated with political parties, and people who are engaged with student politics, and we are losing the second half," said Samir Maleeb of the Communications Club, linked to Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party.
"There is no motivation any more - people just want to study." For many AUB students, campus politics is just as uninspiring as national politics, even against the backdrop of the forthcoming general election in June. "Even the new groups on the scene are led by Bashir [Gemayel]'s son, Gibran [Tueni]'s daughter ?I wouldn't get involved in any of it," said Natasha Khalat, a 19 year-old business student.
Student apathy is not just a response to Lebanese politics, however. "I think it's because we've become a consumer society - people don't care about reading and discussion, they just care about the latest trends. Coming to AUB is like going to a fashion show," said Allam, in a complaint familiar to student activists across the world. "Leftism in Lebanon has been reduced to wearing a red T-shirt."
Allam is currently running an investigation in to the cost of the inauguration ceremony, questioning whether that money could have been put to better use providing financial aid for students unable to afford tuition fees (about two thirds of the students depend on such assistance). But, she says, "no one cares". Although its radical fires may have been extinguished, by providing a genuinely diverse space which is not dominated by any one sect or party, the AUB continues to play an important role in the political development of Lebanon's youth.
Whereas most other institutions have a religious or sectarian character or, in the case of the Lebanese University, are state-run, and therefore subject to political influence, the AUB is celebrated, even by its more radical members, for its tolerant atmosphere. "It offers quality of education and makes every sect and social background want to send their children there, which is why it is so diverse," said Alamjad Salameh from the Cultural Club of the South, a "pro-resistance" organisation with links to Hizbollah.
Rami Ollaik, now an agriculture professor at the AUB, recalled a formative encounter with the institution's diversity as an undergraduate in the 1990s. "I was Hizbollah's representative on campus, and I wanted to turn the AUB in to a stronghold for Muslims," he said. Then he got involved in a coalition organising a protest against a proposed increase in tuition fees. "For the first time I stood against something not as a party member, and I realised that maybe there might be a cause outside the Shia community."
If the AUB is no longer the theatre for historical political struggles, its pluralistic governance model and liberal educational ideals do perhaps still exert an influence on the politics of the region.
Kamal Salibi, an unashamedly partial alumnus, believes it is still unique in this respect. "It is the only university between Rome and Tokyo where people are taught to think."
* The National