Out of Their Own Visions

"This college is for all conditions and classes of men without regard to color, nationality, race or religion. A man may be white, black, or yellow; Christian, Jew, Mohammedan or heathen, may enter and enjoy all the advantages of this institution for three, four or eight years, and go out believing in one God, many Gods, or no God. But it will be impossible for one to continue with us long without knowing what we believe to be the truth, and our reasons for that belief."

Thus, in 1871, an American missionary named Daniel Bliss laid down the credo of the small college he had founded six years before on a hillside outside Beirut. A center of Christian culture in a largely Moslem world, the small college throve and burgeoned, in 1920 became the American University of Beirut, which is today the largest American university outside U.S. territory.

Scrupulously nonsectarian, it has never tried to indoctrinate. In the 90 years from its founding, it has provided the Arab world with such leaders as Charles Malik, Foreign Minister of Lebanon; Ismail el-Azhari, first Premier of the independent Sudan; and Premiers for Iraq, Syria and Jordan--thus acting as a major catalyst in the rise of Arab nationalism. But last week, as it inaugurated its fifth president--John Paul Leonard, former president of San Francisco State College--it confronted in that very nationalism the greatest challenge of its history.

May Queens. On the surface the 70-acre, pine-and-palm-dotted campus, overlooking the Mediterranean, seems as placidly calm as a New England college. Sturdy, ivy-covered buildings, bearing the names of the university's pioneers and benefactors--Dodge, Post, Jesup, West--are flanked by the gleaming modern new engineering building and library. Though the university is largely supported by U.S. oil-company donations and grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, plus $1,000,000 a year from the U.S. Government for scholarships, it is so scrupulous of its impartiality that it gives only one course in American history and offers some of the best courses in the Arab world on Arab civilization.

Its students spontaneously adopt American mannerisms: they dress in the casual Midwestern collegiate style, sip Cokes and malteds at a hangout called Uncle Sam's, annually elect a Miss A.U.B., a Miss Lebanon, and a May Queen. But beneath these superficial Americanisms, the fever of Arab nationalism seethes in every corner of the campus. "My friends," says one student, "are interested in two things: politics and sex, and sex comes in a poor second." Professors estimate that while only a handful (about 20) are Communists, at least 60% of the student body are violently pro-Nasser, and almost all support "positive neutralism." The campus resounds with tirades against Israel and its "creator," the U.S. On one history examination, 40% of the sophomore liberal-arts students used a question on imperial Rome as a springboard for an attack on Western imperialism, and there has even been talk that the American faculty members should be replaced by Arabs.

Freedom to Disagree. In spite of such rumblings, the American faculty feels that the greatest service the A.U.B. can perform is to stick by its founder's credo. The main purpose of the university's schools--Arts and Sciences, Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, Public Health, Engineering and Agriculture--is to teach Western techniques to be used within the framework of Arab culture. "The students," says one psychologist, "can't help but respect the United States more, because we give them the freedom to disagree."

An affable, able administrator who in twelve years saw San Francisco State rise from a fading campus of 800 students to a prospering school of 9,200, new President Leonard is not only an effective money raiser, but also a born diplomat. "The American University of Beirut," said he at his inauguration, attended by Lebanon's President Camille Chamoun, "will not engage in politics nor in indoctrination, but will be free to teach youth to examine and evaluate all ideas . . . One thing we know--that when students are thus educated, they can build nations of their own design. They may not be like those which others have built, but they will achieve the yearnings of their own hearts and will represent the achievement of their own visions."

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