From the President – Fall 2020/Winter 2021

The year 2020 will certainly go down in history as one for the books. It may have ended, but it is hardly behind us. We will continue to ask if we are living through a major turning point or just a seismic aberration in life as we know it. Perhaps both. One thing is certain: it was a very challenging year for people across the globe, and most especially for the people of Lebanon and AUB. In the wake of a radical devaluation of the Lebanese pound, a deadly novel virus spurring the most devastating worldwide contagion since the 1918 influenza, and the catastrophic August 4 Beirut explosion, AUB has had to make some of the most painful decisions in its history, including reducing its workforce and pegging its tuition to a devalued currency rate. With an additional $20 million in the financial aid budget for the coming spring term, we hope to at least ensure that the majority of our enrolled students will be able to complete their education.

In the aftermath of the port explosion, we have seen a spontaneous outpouring of goodwill by our faculty, staff, and students as they participate in a wide array of volunteer efforts, helping to clean up, heal, and rebuild communities. On a less productive note, AUB has witnessed the departure of more than 1,500 faculty and staff—including staff whom we could no longer afford to employ and faculty who needed to find a more stable environment abroad. We hope to see the best of those faculty returning once the storm has passed. More than 250 of our students have also left Lebanon and AUB. And we have seen our revenues tumble by more than 70 percent, an amount that in almost any other university would have already triggered austerity measures leading to the closure of large swaths of operations.

The pandemic may have driven us into our homes, but thanks to recent technological advances, it has not driven us from our work. Universities and businesses around the world are adapting to online interactions that present special challenges for higher education. Our students and faculty are meeting those challenges as we continue to build resources and capacity.

Throughout 2020, our vibrant green oasis on the shores of the Mediterranean has yearned for the vitality of its students, faculty, staff, and alumni following successive waves of pandemic-related closures. The eerily quiet campus has caused us to reflect a great deal, but also to take decisive actions to save that which makes this university so essential for a better tomorrow for Lebanon, the Global South, and the world. 

Fadlo R. Khuri

“We are here today because Daniel Bliss quietly set about doing what he thought best, step by step. There are now many thousands of AUB alumni, and many of them have had an outsized impact on the world through their work as diplomats, engineers, writers, teachers, historians, artists, politicians, nurses, doctors, and scientists. Even though solutions to the multiple crises we face are not going to be achieved by a single individual act, they will not be achieved without all of us acting individually. Step by step, hour by hour, we can make the world a slightly better place.”

Founders Day Keynote speaker, Trustee Huda Y. Zoghbi, MD December 3, 2020