When Daniel Bliss sailed to present-day Lebanon from Boston, Massachusetts, in December of 1855, he probably did not realize that for generations to come, he was about to re-shape the entire Middle East. He first founded a small school in Aley, then headed a boarding school in Souk al-Garb, finally establishing the Syrian Prostant College, which was later renamed the American University of Beirut (AUB), in 1866.

The pioneering institute of higher education did wonders to the Arab World and had a profound effect on nearby Syria. Generations of leaders from throughout the Arab World, in politics, medicine, art, and business, studied at AUB. The Syrian AUB list includes Prime Minister Faris al-Khury, President Nazim al-Qudsi, and nationalists like Abdul-Rahman Shahabandar.

The success story of AUB was made possible through the dedication and vision of its consecutive presidents, starting with Bliss and ending with outgoing President John Waterbury, under whose guidance, AUB was re-born after the devastating Lebanese Civil War. Among the list of AUB presidents are Malcom Kerr, who was assassinated on campus during the war, and the Syrian scholar Constantine Zurayk, who also served as Rector of Damascus University and contributed volumes of literature on Arab nationalism. Marching in the footsteps of towering academics like these is Peter F. Dorman, the new president of the American University of Beirut.

Peter Dorman, an internationally acclaimed cultural anthropologist, is currently professor and chair in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) of the University of Chicago. He is arguably the leading non-Egyptian expert on the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, and an amateur lyric tenor in Chicago, performing with Golosa (The University of Chicago Russian Choir), and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of The University of Chicago. He is a prolific contributor to the study of the ancient near east, particular the field of Egyptology. He is the author and editor of several major books and many articles on the study of ancient Egypt and is probably best known for his historical work on the reign of Hatshepsut. He is also the great-grandson of Dr. Daniel Bliss, AUB’s founding father.

Being an accomplished humanist and researcher in the Ancient Near East, and a specialist in Egyptology, how can your experiences reflect on AUB, an academic institute more firmly grounded in modern 20th Century research?

The subject of my professional interests— ancient pharaonic civilization—is indeed rooted in the distant past, but the current methodologies used in Egyptology and in Egyptian archaeology include a wide range of specialties that are very much up to date. So although my own focus is essentially humanistic, that is, the close reading and understanding of textual and historical sources, our larger field has benefited enormously from the recent contributions of economic theorists, medical and forensic analysts, museum curators, anthropologists, botanical and faunal scholars, and experts working in computer modeling and satellite imaging. This hardly makes me an expert in those areas, of course, but it gives me, as a humanist, a keen appreciation of the biological and physical sciences, and the important contributions of cross-disciplinary interface.

Having chaired the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Chicago, what methodologies and techniques do you believe can be channeled—need to be channeled— to AUB?

One of the priorities of my appointment as chairman of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations was the intellectual life of the department and the productive interaction of faculty with students. Having spent three months as a visitor on the AUB campus in the spring of 2006, I find myself already filled with a deep appreciation of the academic vibrancy of the University. I soon hope to learn more about the dynamics of student and faculty relationships, and how teaching and research can continue to be fostered in a manner that reflects AUB’s extraordinary status in the region as an institution that combines the best of both.

One of the university’s declared objectives has been to expand and develop its PhD program. Do you have any initial ideas on how to develop AUB’s undergraduate and graduate programs?

The welcome recent reinstatement of several PhD programs at AUB is an indication of academic vitality and rigor in fields of inquiry where the faculty is especially strong. My own feeling, still as an outsider, is that the development of the undergraduate and graduate programs lies in seeking ever greater diversity of both our faculty and student body, in continuing to aspire to the highest standards in research and teaching, in expanding the University’s endowment, and in inspiring the intellectual community for which AUB is already so well respected.

AUB was re-born, many would say, during the distinguished tenure of President John Waterbury. It started shortly after the Civil War ended and lasted until 2008, where local and regional upheavals seem to be equally difficult. Have you come yet to know any of the lessons learned? Did he give you any tips?

President Waterbury has dramatically changed the face of AUB in his ten years’ tenure, and I am most fortunate to be following in the wake of his inspirational leadership. As he has been introducing me to the more pressing immediate priorities of AUB, he has also been most forthcoming in answering my questions. His insight into the present state of the University is invaluable, but, wisely, I think, he has refrained from tendering too much of his own advice up front, perhaps realizing that it is best for me to approach the presidency with the chance to formulate my own fresh perspective on its present challenges.

The Campaign for Excellence, which ended in December 2007, raised more than $170 million USD for AUB. What does AUB plan to do with this money?

As I understand it, a major portion of the new endowment has been dedicated to the establishment of faculty chairs in different departments, new research initiatives, and financial aid for students, while another significant portion has been assigned to new construction on campus, to create new physical facilities and significantly enhance the life experience of AUB students.

The Arab region—as a whole—is in grand tension. Can AUB, which outlived the Ottoman Empire, two world wars, and the Civil War in Lebanon, continue with its success story, also in light of the anti-Americanism that is boiling in the Arab world? What is the upcoming regional role of AUB?

This is a good question to ask at this moment, when the optimism of two years ago has led to new fears of political stalemate and a palpable instability within Lebanon and the region as a whole. I believe that expressions of anti-American sentiment are understandably aimed at the current political and militaristic confrontations so prevalent in the region, rather than at all things American. And in light of the fact that AUB, as you have pointed out, has survived years of extraordinary tribulation over fourteen decades, let me take the longer positive view, together with the faculty and staff of the university, that AUB can and will play a vital role in the formation of a peaceful Middle East, through a dedicated pursuit of its educational mission.

AUB is famed for the loyalty of its Alumni. How can you bring this prestigious body of decision-makers around the world, into being more actively invested in for the university’s development?

The loyalty of the alumni of AUB, which I have seen paralleled in no other institution, is simply extraordinary, and arises, I believe, from a fundamental realization of the uniqueness and continuing relevance of their alma mater. Not only do our alumni represent an important face of the institution to the outside world, in all walks of life far beyond the academic sphere, but, more than most, they also acknowledge the seminal influence the University has had in molding them as individuals in a challenging and changeable world. I look forward to meeting them, and soliciting their continued invaluable support.

Lebanon without AUB would have been a different Lebanon indeed. AUB survived the dramatic upheavals of the Civil War but has been affected by turmoil since 2005. Can it sustain its success story in light of American universities opening in the Arab Gulf, private-universities opening in Syria, and uncertainty in Lebanon?

The establishment of new universities and programs in the region, some of them American-affiliated, can perhaps be viewed as posing potential competition to AUB in the realm of higher education, but more importantly it is an acknowledgment of the validity of the American educational model generally, especially in the broad liberal arts program that is at its core. The gold standard was set in this area by AUB, and I see no reason why the University will not continue to lead the way in future, despite the present challenges in drawing more international students to the campus due to current political instabilities.

You are the great-grandson of Daniel Bliss, the university’s founder. Does this burden you with a legacy, now that you succeed him as president of the university he helped found 142-years ago?

To speak frankly, I do indeed sense that legacy: the founder of any institution tends to be a slightly mythic figure. Daniel Bliss has been described to me (by my father’s generation, who remember him) as a somewhat forbidding personality, so I sometimes wonder if my deceased ancestors would have given their blessing to an upstart descendant like me! To be sure, one thing that gives me courage to undertake the task of guiding such a large and complex institution such as AUB is the warm welcome and enthusiasm expressed by so many alumni and faculty and friends, for which I am deeply grateful.

AUB boasts of creating leaders who “live life abundantly” and “leave the walls of this institute believing in one God, in many Gods, or in no God.” Is this still valid or is it more nostalgia than fact?
I don’t regard these phrases as nostalgic or quaint, and in view of the essentially confessional (Protestant) foundation of the AUB, they are remarkably forward-looking. When one considers the present regional uncertainties, these phrases may be taken as inspirational, even remarkably pertinent: the aspiration to embrace the abundance of life in all the diversity it offers, in our continuing quest for human understanding, and in our common desire to provide a richly integrated existence for our families, communities, and nation.

Will your family be joining you in Lebanon, or are they staying back in the US? Can you tell us more about them?

My wife, Kathy, will be joining me in Beirut after leaving her job at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools, where she has been teaching fifth grade for many years. Although teaching may be a future option for her, she hopes to spend at least the first year or two in Beirut adjusting to her new role and assisting me with what will surely prove to be a hectic initiation to a new academic and social routine. Our older daughter, Meg (Oberlin ‘01), received her master’s degree from the Court auld Institute in London two years ago and, with a primary interest in the history of costume, is now working as a curator at Kensington Palace. Our younger daughter, Emily (Vassar ‘03), has just started a new job at the Population Council in New York; having worked for several months at AUB’s Information Office in 2006, she already knows a good deal about the campus. We expect them both to be visiting Lebanon as often as possible.

Peter Dorman in 2008 is an accumulation of experiences and influences. What are the most profound experiences and influences that made you the man you are today?

Had you asked that question two years ago, I would have probably given a different answer! But with my career now apparently culminating at AUB, my thoughts turn inevitably to remembrances of my youth, deeply enough engrained to give me a sense of feeling fully grounded in Lebanon: the crashing surf at the beaches of St. Simon and St. Michel (even if these are now vanished), rolling down the red sand dunes near the airport, lying on the hot mountain rocks in the summer and smelling the heather, swimming in the Damour River, the riotous color of springtime lowers. Perhaps more fundamentally, we as children were constantly aware of the ruins left by the parade of civilizations that have passed along the Phoenician coast. This exposure certainly had a long-lasting effect on me, and in many ways the prospect of moving to AUB feels like coming home.

Do you plan on visiting Syria in your new capacity as AUB President? Dr Waterbury has made 7 trips in 10-years, even recently, despite the tension in Syrian-Lebanese relations, proving that academia rises about politics.

I absolutely hope to visit there. Several years ago my family and I spent just one (much too short) week in Damascus, Palmyra, and Aleppo, and it only whetted our appetite to return to that beautiful and hospitable country.

• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?
• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February

• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?

• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?

• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?