Lebanon the weak, cannibalized state whose citizens still hope

Education Department Associate Professor Rola Khishfe has been training K-12 grade teachers how to teach students to argue, debate, and interact with one another on topics related to science and nature – in a way that allows them to disagree, but always in a civil manner. Evidence-based discussions on science and nature issues – like climate change, cloning, water resources, and many others – generate student interest because they impact people’s lives and usually generate solid arguments for and against basic points. She explains how her work promotes debates and argumentation anchored in facts, while also teaching young people to accept other students’ views because usually there are no explicitly right or wrong answers to seal a difference of opinion.

Dr Rihab Nasr, Tenured professor at the department of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiological Sciences and director of cancer prevention and control program at the Naef K Basile Cancer Institute at the AUB Medical Center, has been internationally recognized for her breakthroughs in detecting leukemia and breast cancer at an early stage. She and her many colleagues’ and students’ innovations in early detection through simple blood tests promise good health and wellbeing for many people – but only, she explains, if the public education, policy-making, and commercial marketing worlds play their roles in working for the same aim.

Internationally renowned Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck’s new collection is published this week by Penguin Poets – the first Arab poet they publish. She graduated from AUB with BA and MA degrees, and has been recognized and published across the world. In this discussion, she explains how the title of this book, ‘O’, captures the ’o’ in body, love, God, mother, joy, ode, home, memory, Lebanon, and other dimensions of people’s lives. She reflects on how poetry amplifies the universal moments in life in the everyday sentiments and actions of people.

Food Security Program Director at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences Rami Zurayk analyzes the many dimensions of food security and insecurity, and how the Ukraine war has worsened stresses for many people around the world. Alongside Ukraine, he mentioned other factors that impact food availability, like climate change, sanctions, the Covid pandemic, local wars, and political economy decisions by predatory or corrupt governments in the north and south alike. Ukraine and Russia have reduced global food trade by just 3-5%, though grain importers like Lebanon and Egypt will suffer disproportionately. What’s the solution? Enshrine people’s right to a healthy diet, he says, and promote positive relationships between people and their landscapes, in order to safeguard both.

Ten years ago, English Department Lecturer in Creative Writing Rima Rantisi and some colleagues in a Hamra pub came up with the idea of launching a new student literary journal. Today, Rusted Radishes is published once a year in Arabic and English, and is open to AUB students and faculty and others across the Arab region. It has expanded beyond literary writing to include poetry, drama, essays, photography, graphics and other art forms. Rima Rantisi retraces this journey, which stresses training talented young writers and creative artists who address human, literary, political, artistic, and personal subjects, “without the interference of a censor – because literature and art get to the heart of issues that matter to people, and reflect the human condition.”The online selection of texts is at RustedRadishes.com, where the printed full version can be ordered.

Associate Professor of English Tariq Mehmood creates and teaches across a wide spectrum of original work, including poetry, novels for adolescents, films, documentaries, archival research, teaching and advising students, and analyzing, and now creating, video games. The new minor in video gaming at AUB aims to counter the gaming world’s prevalent global portrayal of people of color from the global South as terrorists to be killed. The common thread in his life and work, he explains, is the struggle to find justice and his (and the non-White Global South’s) place in this world, by breaking the norm of White supremacy and its legacy of imperialism. He says he wants to inspire young students to tell their own story, create their own heroes, “break the colonization of their minds” by the $200b gaming industry, and, ultimately, reclaim our own histories as a gift to future generations.

Who is responsible for alleviating or reducing the harm done to millions of people due to racism, colonialism, climate change, poverty and wars? AUB Philosophy professor and Mohammad Atallah Chair in Ethics Bashshar Haydar explains his research into this question and others, such as: what do we do about “innocent beneficiaries” of harmful conduct who did not contribute to the harm but gained from it? He also touches on the philosopher’s role in raising public awareness about the facts and how they shape who does what to deal with the harm that lingers.

Dr Lana Salman, with her BA and MSc degrees from AUB, recently completed her PhD at University of California-Berkeley and is now a post-doctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is preparing a book on her research into local politics and citizen-state interactions in Tunisia. In this chat she retraces her journey in academia, the World Bank, and ethnographic research in Tunisia to share her lessons about Arab attempts at decentralization and democratization, with a local communities and urban lens. She debunks some prevalent tropes about democracy and how poor or marginalized people interact with their governments in Arab societies. Her conclusion: local government reforms are the easiest and least costly to do for countries that seek better governance and satisfied citizens.

Iman Nuwayhid’s decades of experience as professor of environmental health, dean of the AUB Faculty of Public Health, and this year a visiting professor at Yale University, prompt him to call for a new way to address public health issues. In this interview he links three pivotal historical events in the USA and Arab lands – George Floy’s killing in the USA that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, Mohammad Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia that triggered the Arab uprisings, and young Mohammad Durra’s killing by Israeli soldiers in Gaza while he was in his father’s arms, which sparked greater Palestinian popular resistance – that compel us to see people’s pain, suffering and death as the consequence of deeper and global realities. Beyond isolated health issues that are counted and documented, we must grasp individual pain and death rather as reflections of systemic and trans-generational injustices. All over the world, going back centuries, these include racism, colonialism, occupation, corruption, and incompetent governance, which create “invisible wounds” that must be made visible, appreciated, and treated through political, social, economic and other means.

Dr. Jamil Mouawad, lecturer in the Political Studies and Public Administration Dept at AUB, has studied Lebanese politics for decades; he is publishing a new book on the nature of the state in Lebanon and how its citizens interact with the state. He explains his theory of Lebanon as a deliberately weakened and cannibalized state whose political elite governs through "shadow" institutions. Yet, he feels Lebanese citizens still yearn and work for a state that delivers its promise, and sees this as a moment to reconstruct the state in a way that allows it to serve all its citizens.