From the Editor – Fall 2019/Winter 2020

Dear MainGate readers,

The dramatic events gripping Lebanon since October 17, 2019, have highlighted for me more sharply than ever how a university can be several different things at the same time. The word “university” denotes a physical location, an institution with policies and hierarchies, and a community of teachers, learners, and employees. This complicates the task of explaining how the Lebanon protests have impacted AUB.

Our campus remains the peaceful and purposeful sanctuary it has always been through good times and bad, albeit with the occasional noisy protest just over the perimeter. Indeed, having just moved our Office of Communications to the Old Pharmacy beside Medical Gate in October, my window is now a few meters from the strategic Bliss-Abdel Aziz intersection that has been the scene of several determined occupations by AUB students, drummers and all, from which I get the full benefit.

At an institutional level, AUB addresses the security and the economic conditions as challenges to be managed as best as possible, while continuing to build our mission of educating students to be ethical future leaders, advancing knowledge through research, and serving the communities around us. To succeed we must and will remain strictly impartial in the prevailing controversies.

As a community, however, the upheaval has galvanized AUB faculty, staff, and students like nothing before, and their voices are among the loudest and most eloquent to be heard across a country witnessing a protest movement that cuts across societal divisions that have long prevented authentic national unity in Lebanon.

This edition of MainGate includes a special section highlighting some of these new realities and how they intersect with life at our university, as well as rejigged sections to fit with our new digital offering. As always, the editorial team hopes you find the AUB stories that we offer here compelling and enjoyable—I can’t think of a time when your support and engagement has been more necessary!

Martin Asser, Executive Editor