American University of Beirut

Dear friends,

As the spring semester rolled into its second week without a hitch, we arrived at LaGuardia Airport primed for a fast-paced week of meetings in New York City, New Haven, and Boston, prior to heading back to Beirut. By the time I stepped out into the evening, the Eastern Seaboard was already muddling through the first of several snowstorms forecast for the week.

I walked through New York City in wet, biting air, the temperature hovering around 28° Fahrenheit (-2° Celsius). I was well protected from the elements—warm sweater, down jacket, gloves—and conscious of it with every step. Snow and sleet gathered along the pavement and, as I moved forward, my mind wandered back to a poem I had learned some 50 years earlier while snowed in by a Nor’easter during my school days in New England.

The poem intruded without permission. Written in 1872 by Christina Rossetti, it was ostensibly a poem about the birth of Jesus. Though its Anglicized imagery bore little resemblance to the Jerusalem of two millennia ago, the snow was never meant to be literal. Winter functioned as a metaphor, evoking a harsh spiritual landscape at the time of Christ’s birth. Its opening lines have endured, revived recently through their echo across six seasons of Peaky Blinders on Netflix.

As I walked, the words resurfaced:

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.”

Snow in New England, I recalled, was a minor form of interruption, a pause in middle-school classes and nothing compared to the far more difficult circumstances we have known in Lebanon. Walking through the wet but relatively mild storm, my thoughts turned to those far more vulnerable to nature and far less fortunate than I. To our people across Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria braving these elements without suitable clothes, without a well-built (or even a standing) home, lacking assurances of anything close to an abundant life. From Asia to Africa, and even in the West, far too many individuals and communities face daily threats to their safety and human rights, for whom basic food, safety, education, and healthcare remain a much greater concern than a walk in stormy weather.

I reflected on the great promise of the post-World War II order. That was a time when there was broad consensus that humanity had learned enough from catastrophe to build a more just, stable, and humane world. Yet so many have been left behind by this new world order, its aspirations, its plans, and its institutions. There remains a persistent gap between the dream and the reality.

As I wandered deeper into the night, another feeling surfaced, an odd admixture of pride and disappointment. Pride, first, that our own institution had weathered the storms that threatened to engulf us, emerging more excellent, more inclusive, and more impactful. Beyond the accomplishments of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, our elevated standards have recently been strengthened through key recruitments by our medical school dean, Raymond Sawaya. The arrival of two stellar young physician-scientists, Haytham Kaafarani (BS Chemistry ’99, MD ’03) from Harvard Medical School and Osama Mohamad (BS Biology ’06) from MD Anderson Cancer Center, to lead our departments of surgery and radiation oncology, respectively, lifted the spirits of our medical center community whose deep losses, which I shared last month, are still keenly felt.

Attracting individuals of such rare qualities within a short timeframe would be notable under any circumstances. Aligning these recruitments with the purchase of brand new, state-of-the-art medical equipment has been both transformative and timely. This momentum has been reinforced by a major realignment in how we maintain and improve our facilities, announced two weeks ago by VP for Administration Mary Jaber (BBA ’99, MBA ’01), alongside the launch of a comprehensive review of total compensation across the university and medical center. As for students, we are continuing to give record amounts of financial assistance and Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Antoine Sabbagh recently shared news of our strongest incoming early undergraduate admissions class. Together, these developments have had a salutary effect on the already formidable morale and confidence of our community.

Yet the sense of disappointment lingered. It was rooted not only in those left behind by modern economic and technological miracles but also in those whose good fortune they consider to be an entitlement rather than a privilege and responsibility, whereby they could turn their good fortune into better ones for others. As I ambled forward in an increasingly somnolent Manhattan, I was reminded of a recent walk, months earlier, across the university campus in far more pleasant weather.

During that walk, I ran into a young man whom I had not seen for almost a decade, a person of considerable intellectual and athletic gifts. He had benefited from substantial support while attending AUB and, later, from a competitive and prestigious scholarship to study finance at one of the world’s premier universities, which AUB had helped him secure. As he looked at me, questioningly, I acknowledged that I remembered him well. I went on to gently note, as I have done to others on innumerable occasions before and since, that there is still a pledge to fulfil: a pledge to support others who are now far less fortunate than he is, just as others once supported him. This in no way diminishes the extraordinary generosity shown by so many of our alumni and friends. Quite the contrary.

In 1989, in his inaugural address, then-US President George HW Bush renewed his call for a “thousand points of light,” a phrase he had coined to celebrate everyday acts of volunteerism and civic kindness. Despite this hopeful message, no amount of philanthropy can cure all the injustice and deprivation in our world. Still, generosity of both action and resources can, and does, make a real difference, especially for those most disadvantaged by an increasingly unforgiving global order. Many would endure far fewer bleak midwinters than they do today if those of us who are considerably more fortunate were to go just that little bit further in helping to create a more temperate winter for others.

With that thought, I returned fully to the present. My stride became just a bit more assured as I walked through the wintry streets ahead. The winter chill remained, but the purpose felt clearer.