The Andalus Test: Reflections on the Attempt to Publish Arabic Literature in Hebrew

[Detail from the cover of Elias Khoury, \"Bab al-Shams.\" Image by Sharif Waked.] [Detail from the cover of Elias Khoury, \"Bab al-Shams.\" Image by Sharif Waked.]

The Andalus Test: Reflections on the Attempt to Publish Arabic Literature in Hebrew

By : Yael Lerer

Should a visitor from another planet happen to arrive here and look around at the reality between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea without the usual lenses of distortion, she would see that in Israel/Palestine—the land stretching from the river to the sea which has been under one rule for over forty years—almost half the population is Palestinian Arab and Arabic is their mother tongue, as well as that of nearly half of the Israeli Jewish population. Should our guest distinguish—as does the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, as well as the Israeli academy and media—between Israeli citizens and occupied Palestinian subjects, she would find that within the category of “Israeli citizens,” the majority is of Arabic-speaking (and to a large extent reading and writing) origin. Our guest would likely notice that Israel is located in the heart of the Arab world and that each and every one of its neighboring countries is Arab.

Out of a desire to familiarize herself with local culture, our guest might walk into a nearby bookshop, where she would expect to find books in Hebrew and Arabic—the two official languages of the state of Israel. But alas, at the first store: Hebrew books only. At the second store: some English books too. The third store, she will find, is dedicated to Russian literature. “There are no Arabs here!” they would all inform her. “This, my dear, is Tel Aviv.” The guest, who has been to Paris and Rome and London and Moscow and Nairobi and Johannesburg and Buenos Aires, might be a bit surprised: “A city without Arabs? Without Arabic? Here? In the center of the Middle East?”

Then our guest might meet up with a friend, also from another planet. Unlike our guest, the friend does not look at reality but rather at its representations. She watches current affairs shows and nightly news on TV; she reads newspapers, especially the “leading liberal daily” Haaretz; she goes to the theatre and the opera; she attends faculty meetings at the university; and, like our guest, she browses bookshops. “Why are you so surprised?” she admonishes our guest, “After all, this is a European country!” This is because by and large the friend only encounters middle-aged secular Ashkenazi men. They are practically the only ones to be seen, heard, and read: the shelves are overflowing with their books, as well as those of their American, French, German, and Spanish counterparts. Our guest does not manage to convince her friend that middle-aged secular Ashkenazi men make up less than ten percent of the land’s people. Nor does she manage to get her to believe that Israel is not in Europe.

It was into this reality, and its representations, that Andalus Publishing was born. But when I launched a publishing house that would specialize in translating Arabic literature into Hebrew, I had the impression that this reality was going to change. It was in the late 1990s, on the eve of the second intifada, and despite my critique of the so-called “peace process,” I hadn’t altogether internalized my own criticism.

Prominent Palestinian intellectuals, including the late Edward Said and former Knesset Member (MK) Azmi Bishara, now in exile, feared that the Oslo process would lead to the formation of Palestinian Bantustans and the consolidation of Israeli Apartheid. Although the Israeli policy of “closure” began in the early 1990s (heralding the “disappearance” of Arabs from Tel Aviv), even the liberal architects of “separation” never imagined the eight-meter high concrete wall. Many of the Oslo critics, myself among them, imagined “closure” as a temporary setback in a framework that nonetheless aimed at reaching historical compromise and “peace.” And even if the word peace was stripped of any meaning, like justice and equality, it seemed the process still pointed toward rapprochement, understanding, and life together, rather than apart.

In the merry Oslo years, alongside the uninhibited construction of new settlements and the paving of bypass roads for Jews only, there was prolific joint Jewish-Arab activity, much of it under the auspices of “people-to-people” type programs aimed at fostering dialogue and funded with European, American, and Japanese money. Concurrently, it seemed as though the dominant Ashkenazi-Zionist ideology that conceives of Israel as a European “bastion of the West in the East” was starting to weaken: the public presence of two historically disempowered and marginalized groups—Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli Jews of North African and Middle Eastern origin (Mizrahim)—could be felt loud and clear.

Andalus’ “Declaration of Intentions,” as written in 1999, read in part as follows:

Andalus is a new publishing house that specializes in the translation of Arabic literature and prose into Hebrew. Andalus, the site of the “golden age” of Islamic and Jewish thought, was also an era during which Jewish and Arabic cultures fed and fertilized one another; an epoch known for its literary and intellectual output by some of the greatest Moslem and Jewish philosophers, theologians, and poets. It was a period during which materials were translated from Arabic to Hebrew and vice versa.

Despite Israel’s location in the heart of the Arab world, Hebrew-reading Israelis remain, for the most part, unexposed to Arabic culture in general, and Arabic literature and thought in particular. The quantity and variety of existing translations is insufficient, especially as compared with the wealth of works translated into Hebrew from European languages—since the 1930s less than forty Arabic language titles have been translated into Hebrew.

Our goal is to establish a successful independent publishing house that will produce a dozen translated titles each year, representing a variety of styles: classical and modern literature, journalistic and academic research, poetry, plays, satires, theory and criticism.

Our first move was to identify translators and editors. Palestinian artist Sharif Waked, who has designed all of our books, also helped to choose the first titles for publication. Everyone and anyone with expertise was consulted, and our appeals for advice were met with enthusiastic and generous input. Our first list of publications consisted of ten novels that would give the uninitiated Hebrew reader a good “sampling” of contemporary Arabic literature.

However, our plans changed when in March 2000, then-Minister of Education, Yossi Sarid announced that he would include two poems by the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish in the high school curriculum. These “poetical not political” poems, to quote Sarid, were to be included in a long list of poems that teachers could choose to assign to their students, but were not, God forbid, to be included in the mandatory reading list. This fact did not prevent Sarid’s decision from triggering pubic hysteria. Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared: “Israeli society is not ripe to study Darwish.” It was much ado about nothing, and still, not a single collection of Darwish’s poems on the Hebrew bookshelf.

The first translator I turned to was the late Muhammad Hamza Ghanaem. Ghanaem dedicated his life to Arabic-Hebrew and Hebrew-Arabic translation. He was devoted to Andalus Publishing as a project and translated three of Darwish’s collections.

When the Darwish “hysteria” broke out in Israel, Ghanaem suggested that we publish Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, which he had already translated. So our first publication was not a novel, but a collection of poetry. The hysteria only strengthened our conviction that the Hebrew-reading public needed to be exposed to Arabic literature. Within weeks, the publishing house was named, a design plan was conceived, and our first book hit the shelves.

Much to our surprise, when the book was published it received almost no attention. Apparently, people found it easier to talk about Darwish without a book in their hands. Despite the hysteria, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? did not sell as well as expected—and yet it remains one of our best and most steady sellers. Most of the poems in the collection deal with the 1948 Nakba and the life that preceded it. It turns out that these “materials” have a readership. One such reader was none other than former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In an interview with Ma`ariv in April 2005, he was quoted as follows:

Have you finished Fontanelle by Meir Shalev?
“I have a few more pages to go. At first, I had a hard time with that book, but as I read on, I discovered that it’s an extraordinary book.”

Meir Shalev is hardly a fan of yours.
“So what? I also read Mahmoud Darwish’s book, and I have spoken about his poem, the one with the horse that was left alone, and how much I envy his description of their connection to the land.”

Mahmoud Darwish addressed the motivation of his Israeli readers before the book was even published, repeating the following sentiment on various occasions: “I would like Israelis to read my poetry, not as a representative of the enemy, not so as to make peace.” In that spirit, Darwish granted us blanket rights to publish his books, refusing any and all form of compensation: “By asking for permission you have surpassed your predecessors. When you start making money from this venture, come back with your offer for remuneration.” With the arrogance and hubris of a first time cultural entrepreneur, I refused to accept what he was telling me. How wrong I was.

Like Andalus’ partners, I too support the position of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals who object to “normalization,” the forging of normal neighborly relations with Israel—economically, politically, culturally—despite ongoing occupation. If you normalize with Israel, you normalize with the occupation. Only on the basis of a just, equal, and viable historical compromise can relations with Israel be normalized, and ending the occupation is but the first condition. Since I founded Andalus, I have recognized the dangers of creating a false sense of "peace-making" and "dialogue" by means of “normalization.” I have always made my objection to normalization publicly known, but more importantly, I have searched for ways to make the translation of Arabic literature into Hebrew a means of resisting the occupation. In our racist reality, where the walls of “separation” loom larger by the day, making Arabic language and culture present in everyday Hebrew life is itself a form of resistance to the rhyme and reason of occupation.

We wanted to publish books on the basis of “purely” cultural considerations (if there is such a thing). We wanted to translate Arabic into Hebrew in accordance with the norms and conventions of the intelligentsia (as opposed to the “intelligence” community—which produces most of the Arabic-Hebrew translations in Israel) and, to the best of our ability, without paternalism and Orientalism.

The Egyptian authors we approached did not share our thinking. Rather, they preferred to ignore our declarations and refused to have their works translated on the grounds of “anti-normalization.” These writers belong to a milieu that avoids any and all contact with Israel as such, even at the price of refusing to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) since, according to them, any contact with Israel, including applying for a visa to cross its borders so as to enter the OPT, constitutes “normalization.” After my initial approach, Andalus came under vicious attack by an Egyptian cultural weekly. This attack was followed by dozens of articles across the Arab world, both supporting and opposing our enterprise.

We were honored to find out that Andalus is privileged to have so many supporters in Arabic literary and intellectual circles. Mahmoud Darwish, Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Mohammed Berrada, Mohamed Choukri, and many others launched a “counter-attack,” lauding Andalus both in theory and in practice. Many of them granted us publication rights free of charge, as a way of expressing partnership and solidarity with our effort. Unsurprisingly, this debate had no echoes in Israel. Just as most Jewish Israelis do not seem to care what Arabs write, they do not care what they think.

I guess Mahmoud Darwish was right. Most Israelis do not care about Arabic literature, and the select few who do want only to “know the enemy” or “make peace” with him. The two novels we published by the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury form an interesting exception. Gate of the Sun (Bab al-Shams) that deals with the Nakba, received a few mentions in the Israeli press over the years, but upon publication in Hebrew it garnered relatively few reviews. Nonetheless, we sold over 5,000 copies (a quarter of which were donated to Israeli public libraries, where they are borrowed frequently). This is Andalus’ bestseller, and the most popular Arabic title ever translated into Hebrew.

In 2005, we published Khoury’s masterpiece Yalo, which does not have to do with the Palestinian narrative per se; rather, like Gate of the Sun, it deals with the intersection of history and memory, this time of a Lebanese prisoner who endures interrogation and torture. We thought the book would surpass its predecessor, especially since the stores showered it with attention, as did the press (sixteen rave reviews in the first month). But alas, Yalo sold just 1,500 copies—far more than most of the titles we have published, which have generally sold five hundred copies or fewer, but nonetheless a disappointment. If this is what a bestseller makes, it seems we have lost the battle for the Hebrew reader’s heart and mind. Our dream of being a self-sufficient, sustainable independent publishing house came to an end.

And then, just as we were forced to freeze our activities, we had a short glimmer of hope. Award-winning Canadian author Naomi Klein—who, like us, resists the normalization of the occupation—asked to publish her latest bestseller The Shock Doctrine in Hebrew via Andalus. Alongside her pointed criticism of the state of Israel, dialogue with Israelis is extremely important to her. So, while like me she has called to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the idea was "not to boycott Israelis but rather to boycott the normalization of Israel and the conflict." She thought that Andalus would be the perfect address for this kind of resistance, and we thought salvation had come.

When Klein generously donated all her royalties toward future translations of Arabic writing into Hebrew, we had every reason to believe that following the Hebrew publication of The Shock Doctrine, Andalus would be able to publish several more books—always our primary goal. Sadly, the increased readership we hoped for never materialized: it seems that Israelis cease to care about anti-globalization when it is linked to anti-normalization and calls the occupation into question. Our would-be Northern savior turned out to be a true political friend, but no Santa Claus.

Klein’s book launch and book tour in June 2009 were dedicated to BDS promotion. We did not plan on there being a brutal massacre in an already besieged and beleaguered Gaza just a few months before. We could not have imagined that ninety-five percent of the Israeli-Jewish population would support the brutal killing of four hundred children. In our wildest dreams, we never imagined the first-time (there is always a first time) phenomenon of Israeli families making their Saturday outing to the hills overlooking Gaza to cheer at the shelling and bombing of one and a half million civilians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air-prison. We did not realize that the walls we have been trying to topple for so many years would become hermetically sealed with self-censorship.

The book launch and book tour for The Shock Doctrine were effectively censored, and most of Klein’s Hebrew followers (from the bestselling No Logo), refusing to hear any political criticism, have boycotted the book. Hence, not only did publishing Naomi Klein not enable us to translate more Arabic titles into Hebrew, it elucidated the fact that the walls we are confronting are more fortified than ever, and that breaking them is a nearly impossible mission.

Nevertheless, after all I have said, Andalus does what it can to prove me wrong, and I hope one day it will. I am continuously reexamining the ways we worked, the choices we made, and the tools we employ to get our books out there. As a cultural enterprise, it has left its illustrious mark: rave reviews, die-hard fans, grateful happenstance readers. As an economic venture, it is a complete failure: supply without demand. Maybe it is not about us, continuous reexamination notwithstanding, but rather about the other publishing houses: in seven years we published twenty-four titles, eighteen of them Arabic literature translated into Hebrew. We increased the numbers of such books by over fifty percent, while the Arabic titles published by other Hebrew publishers in the same period can be counted on a single hand.

And here we must remember our alien guests. How strange it must seem that despite the fact that the majority of the people of the land are Arabic speaking or of Arabic-speaking origin, Arabic is hidden away, and along with it the possibility of al-Andalus—the site of an Arabic-Jewish culture—and of Andalus Publishing. “Our Place in al-Andalus,” wrote Maimonides, yet the number of Israeli Jews who know that Maimonides wrote his finest works in Arabic grows smaller by the day.

At times it seems as though the cultural divide, the mental walls, are deeper and taller than any physical barrier underway. These walls do not just pass between “us and them” (or as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak put it: “We are here and they are there.”). They are erected within ourselves, between our past and our present, between metaphysical fantasy and physical reality, between us and the place where we live.

New Texts Out Now: Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Betty S. Anderson (BSA): I always joke that I conceived the project in the pool of the Carlton Hotel in Beirut. In June 2000, I visited Beirut for the first time so I could attend an Arab American University Graduate (AAUG) conference. One day, I walked with some friends all along the Corniche and up through the American University of Beirut (AUB) campus and then back to the hotel. Since it was late June and ridiculously hot, the only option at that point was to jump in the pool as quickly as possible. Two minutes in the pool and the thought occurred to me that my next research project was going to have to be about Beirut in some way. I had fallen in love with the city in just that one day. A half second later, I thought, I should write a history of AUB.

Besides the fact that I wanted to get back to Beirut as soon as possible, I wanted to know why AUB had been so influential in politicizing its students. At the time, I was doing additional research for my book on Jordan (Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State) and a number of the political activists I studied had attended AUB. Their memoirs were filled with explanations and stories about how important those four years were for the development of their political identities. However, I had no idea as I floated in the pool that day that I’d have to do extensive research on Protestant missionaries and education long before I could even get to those Arab nationalists. At the time, I really knew relatively little about the school’s history.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address?

BSA: When I finally got back to Beirut in 2004, it was research on the educational systems offered at the Syrian Protestant College and AUB that eventually ended up directing my thesis. I was struck initially by the goals the American founders and their successors set for the school. They talked more about the transformative process they wanted the students to undertake than the course options they were offering. For example, Daniel Bliss (1866-1902) preached about producing Protestants who understood not only the liturgy but the lifestyle required of one converting to this faith; Bayard Dodge (1923-1948) exhorted students to follow the model of the modern American man as they sought to develop new characters for themselves. The former presided over a missionary educational system, the latter the new liberal education system then being formulated back in America. The first half of the book discusses this shift as the American University of Beirut was renamed in 1920.

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[Main gate of AUB campus. Photo by Betty S. Anderson.]

Liberal education, as American educators developed it in the second half of the nineteenth century, asks its students to be active participants in their educational experience. Before this point, professors taught their students a fixed body of knowledge; students were required to memorize and recite the data to prove that they had learned it. In liberal education, the system asks that professors teach students how to think and analyze so they can produce data on their own.

The second half of the book examines how the students reacted to this shifting pedagogical focus. The American leaders of the school repeatedly stated their goals for the students, and most books and articles on AUB focus on only those voices. However, that stance leaves out an important element of the AUB story, because only the students can truly determine whether the programs are effective. AUB is famous for the many student protests that have taken place on campus, starting with the Darwin Affair of 1882, leading to the Muslim Controversy of 1909, and then on to the large protests of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. As I discovered when I delved into the archives, students used dozens of newspapers to explain why they were protesting. The catalyst was always a particular event, on campus or off, but the students always framed their arguments around the freedom they felt the liberal education system promised. They fought against any administrative attempts to curtail their actions and frequently accused the administration of not following the guidelines set by American liberal education. This issue became increasingly contentious as students worked to define an Arab nationalism that called on them to be politically active while on campus. The administration continually opposed this position, and many of the student-administrative conflicts centered on the differing definitions of freedom put forward on campus. I put “Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education” in the subtitle of the book because by the twentieth century, these were the two dominant elements defining the relationship between the students and the administration.

J: How does this work connect to and/or depart from your previous research and writing?

BSA: Most of my work has centered on education in one form or another. In my book on Jordan, I wrote of the politicizing role high schools in Jordan and Palestine, as well as schools like AUB, played in mobilizing a national opposition movement in the 1950s. I have published a number of articles analyzing the narratives the Jordanian and Lebanese states present to their students in history and Islamic textbooks. Moving on to a comprehensive study of one particularly influential school was a natural progression. The difference was that I now had to study American education in the same way I had previously examined the influence of education in the Middle East.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

BSA: I hope AUB alumni want to read the book and, equally, that they find something of their story in it. I did not want to cite just the Americans who founded and ran the school; I purposely wanted to write about the students themselves. Typical university histories leave out the words and actions of the students in favor of hagiographies about the founders and their famous successors. I also hope that scholars and students interested in studies of education and nationalism will be interested. This is a book that addresses both Middle Eastern and American studies.

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[Assembly Hall and College Hall, AUB Campus. Photos by Betty S. Anderson.]

J: What other projects are you working on now?

BSA:
I have a contract with Stanford University Press to publish a book called State and Society in the Modern Middle East. Like with anyone who undertakes to write a textbook, I am frustrated with those that are currently available. Textbooks of the modern Middle East typically focus just on state formation, the actions of the chief politicians, and the political interplay between states. My text focuses instead on the relationship between state and society as it developed over the last two hundred years. The states in the region centralized in the nineteenth century, faced colonialism in the early twentieth century, and then independence after World War II; these stages created new roles for state leaders. Civil society, in the broadest definition of the term, emerged from the eighteenth century forward as people sought new ways to organize within and against the states now intruding on their lives. They took advantage of the new institutions the states built to establish for themselves new class, national, and gender definitions, while frequently opposing the states that had introduced these very institutions. My text examines how schools, government offices, newspapers, political parties, and women’s groups constantly negotiated new relationships with their respective states.

Excerpt from The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

From Chapter One:

"The great value of education does not consist in the accepting this and that to be true but it consists in proving this and that to be true," declared Daniel Bliss, founder of Syrian Protestant College (SPC; 1866–1920) and its president from 1866 to 1902, in his farewell address. President Howard Bliss (president, 1902–1920) said in his baccalaureate sermon in 1911, "In a word, the purpose of the College is not to produce singly or chiefly men who are doctors, men who are pharmacists, men who are merchants, men who are preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen; but it is the purpose of the College to produce doctors who are men, pharmacists who are men, merchants who are men, preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen who are men." Bayard Dodge (1923–1948) stated at his inauguration as president of the newly renamed American University of Beirut (AUB; 1920– ), "We do not attempt to force a student to absorb a definite quantity of knowledge, but we strive to teach him how to study. We do not pretend to give a complete course of instruction in four or five years, but rather to encourage the habit of study, as a foundation for an education as long as life itself." The successors to these men picked up the same themes when they elaborated on the school`s goals over the years; most recently, in May 2009, President Peter Dorman discussed his vision of AUB’s role. "AUB thrives today in much different form than our missionary founders would have envisioned, but nonetheless—after all this time—it remains dedicated to the same ideal of producing enlightened and visionary leaders."

In dozens of publications, SPC and AUB students have also asserted a vision of the transformative role the school should have on their lives. The longest surviving Arab society on campus, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa, published a magazine of the same name during most academic years between 1923 and 1954 and as of 1936 stated as its editorial policy the belief that "the magazine`s writing is synonymous with the Arab student struggle in the university." From that point forward, the editors frequently listed the society`s Arab nationalist goals. In the fall 1950 edition, for example, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa`s Committee on Broadcasting and Publications issued a statement identifying the achievement of Arab unity as the most important goal because "it is impossible to separate the history, literature and scientific inheritance of the Arabs" since "the Arab essence is unity." Toward this end, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa pledged to accelerate the "growth of the true nationalist spirit" among the students affiliated with the organization. In describing education as an activist pursuit, the statement declares, "To achieve political ideas which are aimed at our nationalism it is necessary for we as students to seek information by many different means." In this call, the AUB Arab students must take on the task of studying the Arab heritage as thoroughly and frankly as possible so that when they graduate they can move into society with solutions to the many problems plaguing the Arab world.

Since the school`s founding in 1866, its campus has stood at a vital intersection between a rapidly changing American missionary and educational project to the Middle East and a dynamic quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. As the presidential quotes indicate, the Syrian Protestant College and the American University of Beirut imported American educational systems championing character building as their foremost goal. Proponents of these programs hewed to the belief that American educational systems were the perfect tools for encouraging students to reform themselves and improve their societies; the programs do not merely supply professional skills but educate the whole person. As the quotes from al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa attest, Arab society pressured the students to change as well. The Arab nahda, or awakening, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called on students to take pride in their Arab past and to work to recreate themselves as modern leaders of their society; the Arab nationalist movement of the twentieth century asked that students take a lead in fighting for Arab independence from foreign control. The students streaming through the Main Gate year after year used both of these American and Arab elements to help make the school not only an American institution but also one of the Arab world and of Beirut, as the very name, the American University of Beirut, indicates. This process saw long periods of accommodation between the American-led administration and the Arab students, but just as many eras when conflict raged over the nature of authority each should wield on campus; the changing relationship between the administration and the students serves as the cornerstone of this book, for it is here where much of the educational history of SPC and AUB has been written.

From Chapter Five:

The 1952 April Fool’s Day issue of Outlook (called Lookout on that day) satirized the proliferation of student protests that had dominated campus life for the previous few years. In the paper’s lead article, the author declared, “A School of Revolutionary Government, designed to equip AUB students with a wide knowledge of modern techniques of conspiracy and revolution, is to be opened during the fall semester, a communique from the President’s Office announced late Friday.” Continuing the same theme, the article reports, “All courses will include a minimum of three lab hours to be spent in street battles with gendarmes and similar applications of theories learned in classrooms.” President Stephen Penrose (1948-1954), the article stated, gave a Friday morning chapel talk on the new school motto: “That they may have strife and have it more abundantly.” In a further announcement, the paper described the day’s protest.

There will be a demonstration this afternoon at three in front of the Medical Gate to object against everything[.] All those interested please report there promptly five [minutes] before time. The demonstration promises to be very exciting—tear gas will be used, and the slogans are simply delightful. If all goes well, police interference is expected. If not to join, come and watch.

This, of course, had not been the first era of student protest; the difference by the 1950s was the widespread and sustained nature of the conflict between the administration and the students. When Lookout published its satirical articles in 1952, students had been organizing demonstrations in support of Palestinians and Moroccans, and against any and all things imperialist, since 1947; these events only petered out in 1955 as the administration banned the two main groups organizing them, the Student Council and the Arab society, al-cUrwa al-Wuthqa. Students engaged in these exercises explicitly as Arabs, proud of their past, and striving toward cultural, political and economic unity in the future. In their actions, students sought to integrate their educational experiences at AUB with the real-life events taking place outside the Main Gate, for only then did they feel they could be trained to function as the vanguard initiating the necessary changes in their society.

[Excerpted from Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. © 2011 by The University of Texas Press. Excerpted by permission of the author. For more information, or to order the book, click here.]