From the Editor

July 2020

Dear MainGate readers,

As I write this, I am sitting in front of the only window to the world most of us have in the summer of 2020. As potential hosts to a deadly virus, we are homebound, masked, and socially distanced. The COVID-19 pandemic has limited our freedom to mingle and congregate while deepening our understanding of connection and connectedness. In Lebanon this situation is compounded by social unrest, an unprecedented banking crisis, and an unstable economy.

No one could have predicted the events of 2019—20, and it’s hardly possible to foresee what the upcoming academic year will bring. We know that our university unites us and is sound of mind, body, spirit, purpose, and principle. This issue of MainGate seeks to illustrate our current situation by featuring elements of the university and its medical center that fill us with enormous pride.

In Inspiration & Discovery we feature our remarkable students, an essay by Professor Carmen Geha on the life-affirming and character-molding aspects of university life, and commentary by Rami Khouri on the twists and turns of remote learning. In Health & Wellness we meet a number of outstanding AUB clinicians and scientists who are working around the globe to better understand and eliminate the world’s worst pandemic in over one hundred years. And in AUB Connects, we feature the incomparable international stand-up comic Nemr, who believes that people who can laugh together, can surely live together.

AUB is used to uncertainty and adversity. In its long history it has withstood the end of the Ottoman Empire, two world wars, the birth of Lebanon as an independent country, a long civil war, and many other major events. Our hope is that these turbulent times will pave the way for transparency in government and allow for knowledge and expertise to pull the levers of our complex modern societies.

AUB exists for this moment in time—a moment when the present might well meet the future.

Martin Asser, Executive Editor