Born on May 2, 1929 in Bhamdoun in Mount Lebanon, he completed his secondary education at the Prep School in Beirut (now International College), and his BA in History and Political Science from AUB, before moving to the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS (University of London) where he earned his PhD in history under the supervision of historian Bernard Lewis.

After his graduation from SOAS, Salibi joined AUB as bibliographer of the Arab Studies Program. He then became professor in the Department of History and Archaeology where he joined other prominent and already established historians such as Nicholas Ziadeh and Zein Zein. In 1965, he published The Modern History of Lebanon, which was subsequently translated into Arabic, Russian, and French. Salibi eventually became one of the pillars of the history department, mentoring, training and supervising many students who later became authorities in their own right.

In the summer of 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Salibi was finalizing his controversial book, “The Bible Came from Arabia”, which was translated into German at the same time as the original English version was being published in London. In this book he argued that the origin of the First Testament pointed to southwest Arabia rather than Palestine. Salibi wrote subsequent works on biblical issues using the same etymological and geographic methodology. Some of his books are today considered classics, notably A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (1988) and The Modern History of Jordan (1993).

In 1994, Salibi helped found the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman, Jordan and became its director from 1997 until 2004, following his retirement from AUB. Since then, he has been associated as a consultant with the Druze Heritage Foundation.

“AUB regrets to announce that Sir James Wolfensohn, out of concern that his presence at the June commencement ceremony would distract from the celebratory nature of the event, has decided that he will not attend,” read a statement released by the university.

The decision came after more than 90 faculty members signed a petition, entitled “Not in our name: AUB faculty, staff and students object to honouring James Wolfensohn.”

This pressured the university to revoke its decision to grant an honorary doctorate to Wolfensohn, who was also scheduled to give the keynote address at the university’s commencement on June 25.

AUB president Peter Dorman will now give the address instead.

The petition argued that “honouring Mr Wolfensohn… symbolically undermines AUB’s legacy in the struggle for social justice and its historical connection to Beirut, to Palestine and beyond.”

It also detailed Wolfensohn’s alleged links to Israeli companies and accused him of being “an investor in an Israeli company developing transport infrastructure for illegal Jewish-only settlements built in the occupied West Bank” and a “standing member of the international advisory of the Israeli Democracy Institute.”

Wolfensohn, an Australian-born naturalised US citizen, could not be reached for comment.

The international investment banker and financial adviser served as president of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005 and is currently chairman of his own firm, Wolfensohn and Company.

In past years, several artists and writers have had to cancel scheduled performances in Lebanon amid controversy over their alleged ties to Israel, which ended a 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

Lebanon remains technically at war with Israel and has vowed to be the last Arab country to sign a peace agreement with the Jewish state.

Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006.

africaasia

After the announcement of her appointment to the two-year term, Leonard Leo, the Chair of USCIRF, remarked: “My fellow Commissioners and I are most pleased to welcome Professor al-Hibri to the Commission. She comes with a distinguished record of service as a human rights advocate devoted to the protection of freedom of religion for people of all faiths, and we look forward to working with her”.

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF’s principal responsibility is to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress.

Dr. al-Hibri is the Founder and Chair of KARAMAH , a non-profit organization dedicated to contributing to the understanding and promotion of human rights worldwide through education, legal outreach, and advocacy (http://www.karamah.org). Dr. al-Hibri is a Professor at the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond. She is a former professor of Philiosphy and founding editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. She is also the recipient of the First Freedom Award for the State of Virginia in 2007 from the Council for America’s First Freedom.

For the past twenty years, Dr. al-Hibri has written extensively on issues of Muslim women’s rights, Islam and democracy, and humans rights in Islam, and is widely published in law journals and other legal publications. Dr. al-Hibri has lectured extensively within the United States, Europe, and the Muslim world at universities, religious and interfaith institutions, community centers, governmental agencies, think tanks, and various public forums. Currently, Dr. al-Hibri is completing a book on the Islamic marriage contract in U.S. courts.

American Muslim
Photo: Dr. al-Hibri , a Lebanese-American began her scholarly career at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where she earned her BA in philosophy in 1966.

Steve Jobs is the founder of Apple, Pixar, and NeXT Computer

With accolades that include CEO of the decade and person of the year, Steve Jobs is routinely voted one of the most influential and powerful people in the world. He catapulted Apple to the world’s leading technology company through the iPod revolution and innovations that followed such as the iPhone and the iPad. The creative mind of Steve Jobs is often chronicled, including his life story as the adopted child of a modest American family.

What most fail to realize is that his living biological father is of Syrian origin. Abdul Fattah “John” Jandali emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s to pursue his university studies. Most media outlets have published little about Jandali, other than to say he was an outstanding professor of political science, that he married his girlfriend (Steve’s mother) and by whom he also had a daughter, and that he slipped from view following his separation from his wife.

An American historian, however, has now stirred controversy over the role of genes and their superiority over nurture in the case of Steve Jobs, by describing Jandali in a detailed critical article published briefly on the Internet before it was suddenly removed, as “the father of invention”, given that Jandali’s daughter Mona (Simpson) – Steve’s sister – is also one of the most famous contemporary American novelists and a professor at University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

The 79-year-old Jandali has deliberately kept his distance from the media.What is known about him lacks detail, and is both one-sided and a source of curiosity at the same time. Here is his story as Jandali himself told it to Al-Hayat.

Jandali in Syria

Abdul Fattah Jandali was born in 1931 to a traditional family in Homs, Syria. His father did not reach university, but was a self-made millionaire who owned “several entire villages”, according to his son. His father held complete authority over his children, authority not shared by his traditional and “obedient” wife.

“My father was a self-made millionaire who owned extensive areas of land which included entire villages,” Jandali said. “He had a strong personality and, in contrast to other parents in our country, my father did not reveal his feelings towards us, but I knew that he loved me because he loved his children and wanted them to get the best university education possible to live a life of better opportunities than he had, because he didn’t have an education. My mother was a traditional Muslim woman who took care of the house and me and my four sisters, but she was conservative, obedient, and a housewife. She didn’t have as important a part in our upbringing and education as my father. Women from my generation had a secondary role in the family structure, and the male was in control.”

The American University

Jandali did not stay long in Syria. “I left for Beirut when I was 18 to study at the American University, and I spent the best years of my life there,” he said.

He was a pan-Arabism activist, and his star soon began to shine. He headed an intellectual and literary society which had a nationalist bent and counted among its members symbols of the Arab nationalists’ movements such as George Habash, Constantine Zareeq, Shafiq Al-Hout and others.

“I was an activist in the student nationalist movement at that time,” he said. “We demonstrated for the independence of Algeria and spent three days in prison. I wasn’t a member of any particular party but I was a supporter of Arab unity and Arab independence. The three and a half years I spent at the American University in Beirut were the best days of my life. The university campus was fantastic and I made lots of friends, some of whom I am still in contact with. I had excellent professors, and it’s where I first got interested in law and political science.”

The university’s Campus Gate magazine published in its 2007 spring issue an article by Tousef Shabal in which he says: “The Al-Urwa Al-Wuthqa Association was founded in 1918 and dedicated to cultural and political activities. Between 1951 and 1954 the society was headed by Abdul Fattah Jandali, the now deceased Eli Bouri, Thabit Mahayni and Maurice Tabari. The decision to disband the society was taken after the events of March 1954…” a reference to the violent demonstrations that took place on the university campus against the Baghdad Pact.

According to Shabal, the society consisted of “diverse political groups such as Arab nationalists and communists, and competition for the managing positions was red hot, but in the end went in favor of the Arab nationalists.”

When Jandali graduated from the American University in Beirut, Syria was going through troubled political and economic times, according to Jandali, and although he wanted to study law at Damascus University and become a lawyer, his father did not agree, saying that there were “too many lawyers in Syria”.

He continued: “Then I decided to continue my higher studies in economy and political sciences at the United States where a relative of mine, Najm Al-Deen Al-Rifa’i, was working as a delegate of Syria to the United Nations in New York. I studied for a year at Columbia University and then went to Wisconsin University where I obtained grants that enabled me to earn my master’s and doctorate. I was interested in studying the philosophy of law and analysis of law and political sciences, and I focused in my studies at the American University on international law and the economy.”

The birth of Steve and Mona

While studying in Wisconsin, Jandali met Joanne Carole Sciebele by whom he had a boy while they were both still students, but Sciebele’s father was conservative and wouldn’t agree to them getting married, so she gave her baby boy – Steve Jobs – up for adoption.

Mona Simpson is the author of five books of fiction: My Hollywood, Off Keck Road, A Regular Guy, The Lost Father and Anywhere But Here.

Abdul Fattah (who added “John” to his name) returned and married Sciebele, and they had a daughter and named her Mona, but he then traveled to Syria – part of the United Arab Republic at the time – intending to enter the diplomatic corps.

The United Arab Republic

“I had two basic paths open to me after graduating,” Jandali said. “Either go back to my home country and work with the Syrian government, or stay in the United States and in university education, and that is what I did for a while. I went back to Syria when I got my doctorate, and I thought I’d be able to find work in the government, but that didn’t happen. I worked as a manager at a refinery plant in my hometown of Homs for a year, during which Syria was part of the United Arab Republic and run by the Egyptians. Egyptian engineers, for example, ran the Ministry of Energy in Syria, and the situation wasn’t right for me, so I went back to the United States to rejoin education there.”

According to Jandali, his wife decided to break up with him while he was away in Syria, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his academic work.

“I enjoyed university education very much, it was a rewarding profession, but unfortunately during the sixties and seventies in the United States the pay was very poor for academics, and in general they did not enjoy great respect due to the prevailing belief that professors only taught because they couldn’t do anything else. That is stupid and wrong, of course. I was an assistant professor at Michigan University then at Nevada University. I purchased a restaurant and became interested in making money, and I gave up academic work to run the business. After the restaurant I was a manager at companies and organizations in Las Vegas, and then I opened two restaurants in Reno and joined the organization that I manage today.”

Jandali describes himself as an “idealist”. “Any job I want to do, I try my utmost to see it through completely or not do it at all. Academically, I was very successful. In business management, after a couple of difficult years, I improved. For example, now I run the organization I work in. Success in the world of business requires you to be interested in your assistants and staff and to have a clear vision.”

80 years: No to retirement

Jandali is that rare case of a person continuing work beyond the age of retirement, and it is something he is proud of.

“Next March I’ll be in my eighties, but to look at me you’d think I was only in my sixties because I’ve taken care of myself, looked after my health, and I love work. I think retirement is the worst of western societies’ institutions. When people retire they become detached, grow old and stop looking after themselves. Enthusiasm for life dies out and energy levels drop, and they effectively kill themselves, even though they’re still alive. I’m not planning to retire even if I leave my position here after a year or two. I’ll dedicate myself to writing, I might write a book or two. My daughter is a very successful novelist with five books, and I plan to move on from my work, and I’m thinking of writing about the Arab World, perhaps a historical narrative with analysis for the future.”

But even so, Jandali has not been to Syria for over 35 years. “Not because I don’t want to, but because of the worry which affects an emigrant when he wants to go back to his home country after so many years, and over what might await him there. I’m thinking of visiting Lebanon and Abu Dhabi next summer to see relatives,” he said.

He doesn’t hide his nostalgia. “I miss my family in Syria. When I left, my closest relatives were still alive. I miss my culture and society and the tight social bonds between relatives as well as the standard of living. Here in the United States there is technological advancement and abundant opportunities for growth and work, but it’s not life itself, and while one appreciates the individual freedoms in western societies, there are times when you really feel that you are alone, that you don’t have the moral family support that you have in the east. I’m not talking about one’s mother or father, but the wider family, relatives, that entity that makes you feel you are part of it, that’s what I miss most about my home country. Of course I miss the social life and wonderful food, but the most important thing is the outstanding cultural attributes which in general you don’t find in the West.

“If I had the chance to go back in time, I wouldn’t leave Syria or Lebanon at all. I would stay in my home country my whole life. I don’t say that out of emotion but out of common sense. I think I’ve wasted my energies and talents in the wrong place and in the wrong society. But that’s just theoretical talk, and what’s happened has happened.” So what remains of his Syrian identity and Arabic culture after nearly 60 years in America?

“I’m a non-practicing Muslim and I haven’t been on the Haj, but I believe in Islam in doctrine and culture, and I believe in the family. I have never experienced any problem or discrimination in the United States because of my religion or race. Other than my accent which might sometimes suggest that I’m from another country, I have completely integrated in society here. I advise young Arabs coming here, however, to get a university degree and not prolong their stay, as there are lots of opportunities in the Arab World today, particularly in the Gulf. The good minds of the Arab world must stay there, as they might be able to help their countries there more than they can here.

Father of invention

Responding to his being called the “father of invention”, Jandali says: “My daughter Mona is a famous writer, and my biological son is Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple. The reason he was put up for adoption was because my girlfriend’s father was extremely conservative and wouldn’t let her marry me, and she decided to give him up for adoption. Steve is my biological son, but I didn’t bring him up, and he has a family that adopted him. So if it’s said that I’m the ‘father of invention’, then that’s because my biological son is a genius and my daughter a brilliant writer. I thank God for my success in life, but I’m no inventor.

“I think that if my son Steve had been brought up with a Syrian name he would have achieved the same success. He has a brilliant mind. And he didn’t finish his university studies. That’s why I think he would have succeeded whatever his background. I don’t have a close relationship with him. I send him a message on his birthday, but neither of us has made overtures to come closer to the other. I tend to think that if he wants to spend time with me he knows where I am and how to get hold of me.

“I also bear the responsibility for being away from my daughter when she was four years old, as her mother divorced me when I went to Syria, but we got back in touch after 10 years. We lost touch again when her mother moved and I didn’t know where she was, but since 10 years ago we’ve been in constant contact and I see her three times a year. I organized a trip for her last year to visit Syria and Lebanon and she went with a relative from Florida. I always take the side of the mother because the son will always be happiest with his mother.

I’m proud of my son and his accomplishments, and of my work. Of course I made mistakes, and if I could go back in time I would have put some things right. I would have been closer to my son, but all’s well that ends well. Steve Jobs is one of the most successful people in America, and Mona is a successful academic and novelist.”

On the likelihood of Steve Jobs being regarded as an “American-Arab”, Jandali says: “I don’t think he pays much attention to these gene-related things. People know that he has Syrian origins and that his father is Syrian, that’s all well-known. But he doesn’t pay attention to these things. He has his own distinctive personality and he’s highly-strung. People who are geniuses can do what they want.”

Al Hayat

“The announcement that AUB was changing its tuition and financial aid policies prompted a strong—and mostly peaceful—reaction from many AUB students, who demonstrated on campus … and expressed their dissatisfaction in other ways as well,” the university’s president, Peter Dorman, said in a statement.

The previous tuition and financial aid policies stated the following changes:

1.Beginning with the class of students entering in fall 2010, AUB will move from charging a flat rate for tuition based on 12 credit hours per semester to a flat rate for tuition based on 15 credit hours per semester. There will be no additional charge for students wishing to enroll for more than 15 credit hours per semester.

2.This new policy will not affect current AUB students.

3.AUB has promised to freeze tuition increases at 4 percent for the next three years.

4.The University will increase the amount of financial aid it provides for new financial aid students entering AUB in fall 2010 to ensure that they will not have to pay more than 25 percent of the additional cost involved in this new policy.

5.A majority of the increased revenues that AUB expects to realize from this new tuition policy will be used to provide financial aid grants.

6.The University will partner with local banks to facilitate and expand access to low interest (3 percent) subsidized loans, which will be available to both incoming and current students without the need to demonstrate loan collateral. For the first time, these loans will not be limited to students majoring in targeted professional programs, but in all students in each of the faculties across the University, made possible by AUB’s subsidy of interest payments while students remain enrolled in classes.

“In response to a request from the University Student Faculty Committee (USFC), I announced on May 24th that while AUB is committed to the new policy regarding tuition and financial aid, it will apply the new tuition base of 15 credit hours only beginning with the entering undergraduate class of fall 2011, one year later than envisioned,” Dorman said.

“Other parts of the new policy will be implemented immediately, as originally intended: the freeze on tuition increases at 4 per cent for the next three years and the availability of low-interest loans for all students,” he said in his statement.

“My announcement also contains a pledge to increase the transparency of the financial-aid award process through direct involvement of students where appropriate, and the added participation of students, parents, and socially responsible businesses in a campaign to raise funds for financial aid,” Dorman added.

Naharnet

In a town hall at the American University of Beirut earlier this month, nearly 300 in the crowd castigated Sari Hanafi, a scholar and Palestinian activist, for his role as co-editor of the book, “The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Hanafi ( pictured right) worked on the book with two Israeli scholars from Tel Aviv University, Adi Ophir and Michal Givoni, both of whom publicly oppose the Israeli military presence in the West Bank.

Lebanese law forbids contact between its nationals and Israel. The two countries remain technically at war. There’s also an ongoing effort to isolate Israel called the Palestinian Academic Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which many AUB students and faculty support.

“This open collaboration between an Israeli academic and an AUB academic is unprecedented in my 50 years of service at this university,” said Tarif Khalidi, professor of Arab and Middle Eastern studies at AUB, who addressed the audience at the March 8 meeting. “I say ‘open’ because God knows what might be happening under the table. This is especially disturbing in a country like Lebanon, which is still in a state of war with Israel.”

Some have called the drive against Hanafi a McCarthy-like effort to punish a professor who defied the current Arab world orthodoxy by partnering with the enemy.

Hanafi apologized to students and faculty at the town hall but also strenuously defended himself before the hundreds assembled. “We are committed to a common cause which should open up the space we need for a vigorous yet respectful conversation on the issue of academic boycott and the publication of my recent book,” said the 47-year-old social scientist.

He said said scholars need to “distinguish between Jewish, Israeli and Zionist” as well as between individual scholars and institutions in adhering to the boycott.

“As a political sociologist working on issues of Israeli technologies of power, I will continue to find myself writing and working in ‘gray areas,’ ” he said. But he also promised that he would henceforth “be very careful to take into account” local sensitivities in pursuing his work.

Some weren’t buying it. “The current Israeli government is arguably the most vicious in the history of that state,” Khalidi said. “Any act of cooperation or collaboration is seen in Israel as a blow to the international boycott. I cannot think of any instance in which collaboration with Israeli scholars, on any level, can serve the cause of Palestine, Lebanon or the Arab world.”

The issue has roiled the campus. Ahmad Dallal, provost at AUB, issued a letter urging calm but reminded scholars they must adhere to Lebanon’s rules.

“I take this opportunity to remind all members of our community that, as an institution of higher learning with an historic presence in Lebanon and the Middle East, AUB is deeply committed to upholding the essential values of academic freedom, and will do so within the bounds of Lebanese law, which strictly prohibits collaboration with Israeli institutions,” he wrote.

Hanafi interrupted his speaking tour at Cambridge University and University of Exeter, where he had been presenting his book in honor of International Apartheid Week, to return to Beirut for what another AUB professor privately described as “a witch hunt.”

The fight has pitted student against student. An AUB Anti-Normalization Petition garnered 330 signatures by students and sympathizers against any ties with the state of Israel. Others launched In Solidarity with Prof. Sari Hanafi-No to the Arabo/McCarthyism, a Facebook page, as a counter-effort.

In Hanafi’s book, the editors insist that their scholarship is “essential for forming effective resistance to the occupation and for coming to terms with the real prospects of bringing it to an end.”

Though Israel and Lebanon continue to technically be in a state of war, even some Arab activists have urged cooperation between Arabs and Israelis sympathetic to their cause. In 2001, the Palestinian NGO Network announced that Palestinian activists and academics could cooperate with like-minded Israelis. The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute organized workshops which Palestinians and Israelis attended. It also granted a fellowship to Ophir and some of his Ph.D. students who contributed to the book.

But in 2004, the boycott-Israel drive was inaugurated, with Hanafi as one of its earliest endorsers. It urges scholars from the international community “to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions until Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem,” according to its website.

Hanafi, Ophir and Givoni decided to begin work on their book in 2005.

Scholars from Cambridge and Exeter Universities have come to Hanafi’s support. “The book could not, and must not, be seen as a violation of [the boycott],” a statement said. “We strongly sense that a normative and literal application of the rules may sometimes produce paradoxical outcomes, as the campaign and petition against Hanafi demonstrates.” LAT

The lecture will be held in Maamari Auditorium at the new Suliman Olayan School of Business, near the Green Field.

Slim, who is of Lebanese descent ( his father, Julian Slim Haddad, arrived in Mexico in 1902 from Lebanon) , is an engineer, businessman and philanthropist, whose holdings include companies engaged in telecommunications, finance, media, and a large number of industries.

He recently grabbed the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires Americans to become the wealthiest person on earth with a fortune estimated at $53.5 billion, thus beating out Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It was the first time in 16 years that the person on top of the Forbes list was not from the United States, nor Europe, and the first from an “emerging economy”.

The billionaire has a substantial influence over the telecommunications industry in Mexico and much of Latin America. He controls Teléfonos de México (Telmex), Telcel and América Móvil companies. Carlos Slim currently serves as chairman of the Board of Directors of Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina, S.A. de C.V. (IDEAL); chairman of Fundación Telmex, A.C.; chairman of Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, A.C.; chairman of the Executive Committee of Consejo Consultivo de Restauración del Centro Histórico; and chairman of Fundación del Centro Histórico, A.C..

Slim studied engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autanoma de México. By the time he was 26 years old, his net worth was $40 million.

In 2008, Carlos Slim was nominated member of Research and Development Corporation Executive Board, a nonprofit research organization in the United States which offers assessment and solutions about commerce and politics, among other aspects, throughout the world. Al Bawaba.

Carlos Slim Helu with Lebanese PM Saad Hariri who is also a billionaire who came in 536th on the Forbes list with $ 1.9 billion

MP Assaad Hardan, leader of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) announced the death of Dr. Anis Sayegh, in a statement issued today calling him an intellectual and national activist and said, “This is a brave man who has dedicated his entire life to defend Palestine and the nation.”

Born in Tiberius, East of Haifa on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Sayegh fled Palestine with his family in 1948. He has lived in Lebanon most of his life since then, first attending the Sidon School and later AUB. He and his Jordanian wife lived in England for five years where he studied and taught at Cambridge. Returning to Lebanon, Sayegh headed the Palestinian Research Center (PRC) for ten years, which at one time had the largest library of books about Palestine outside Palestine.

Sayegh edited the 11 volume Palestinian Encyclopedia, which took around 20 years to complete and is the only encyclopedia in Arabic devoted to one topic. He also served as editor for three magazines during the 1970s and ’80s: Palestine Affairs, Arab Future, and Arab Affairs, the first and only magazine of the League of Arab States. Also active politically, Sayegh has twice been elected to the number two position in the Palestine National Council in 1998 and, most recently, in 2008.

On Jan 1, 2006 he wrote: “I am one of the seven million Palestinians prohibited by Israel from living in my homeland to enjoy my national sovereignty and rights which are guaranteed me by numerous covenants and charters, so that I may live a free and dignified life and practice my traditions, develop my culture and carry on my heritage, so that I may establish a democratic system – which most people desire.”