Professors at Work

AUB Photojournalist-in-Residence George Azar in the Media Studies Program has covered the Middle Eats for the past 40 years for top Western and Middle Eastern media, including the New York Times, AP, Al Jazeera, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He explains how his ‘observational documentaries’ strive to tell human stories that also shed light on larger political or social issues. Speaking from experience across continents and eras – from the 1980s Lebanon civil war to the ongoing uprisings in Arab lands – he shares what he has learned about political inclinations of different media firms. He also affirms the best practices he believes in, such as being fair-minded, listening to rather than judging people, and reporting on the ground from the perspective of ordinary men and women.

Marc Ayoub coordinated the energy policy and security program at AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, where he and colleagues worked on critical issues in the energy sector – which mostly remain unresolved. Now he’s an Associate Fellow at IFI while mainly researching energy issues at the University of Limerick in Ireland. In this episode he looks back on attempts to engage and convince policy-makers to adopt more effective policies in fields like solar energy, electricity production, and others. He stresses that engaging with experts and citizens in all arenas is a critical step, for it allows public officials to develop trust in academic analyses that could help resolve critical issues that impact all citizens. That battle continues today, as experts in many countries try to solve the puzzle of how to translate technical knowledge into policy-relevant action.

Dr. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Associate Professor of English, has spent years documenting the story of an extraordinary group of young men and women, Christians, Muslims and Jews from Palestine, Lebanon, and Germany, who met weekly at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in the period immediately before the Nakba of 1948. Some of them went on to become internationally acclaimed writers, artists, and intellectuals, including Wald Khalidi and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. Dr Mejcher-Atassi explains some of the lessons she learned from her painstakingly slow research across many countries and disciplines, in official and private collections and archives. Her book on this historical moment brings to life these individuals' lives and what their group tells us about urban life in Palestine during a violent period of Palestinian and Zionist nationalist contestation and British colonial retreat.

Dr. Hiba Khodr, Associate

Professor of Public Policy and Public Management, and a visiting scholar this year at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, is systematically analyzing how the four simultaneous crises in Lebanon have impacted society and how civil society has responded. She is exploring how three local organizations in thefields of health, finance, and humanitarian work responded in arenas where the state has failed to do so, and what the government is doing in some areas. outcome of her work will be an index to measure the impact of civil society in a crisis.  

Danyel Reiche, tenured associate professor of comparative politics at AUB, has studied for many years the relationship of sports to culture, religion, identity and other issues. He is on leave this year at Georgetown University-Qatar, where he directs the research initiative “Building a Legacy: Qatar FIFA World Cup 2022." He explains how the World Cup impacts different sectors in different ways and at different speeds, including migrant workers' rights, women's status, technological innovations. He also discusses how the boycott of Qatar by some Arab states and the World Cup activities both impacted the country in different ways.

Assistant Professor Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, in the Graduate Program in Public Policy and International Affairs and the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration, had led a research and teaching project on the hidden dimensions of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in politics and international relations. He explains how the sea matters in different ways to all the people who share it – in trade, migration, political protest, environmental conditions, labor, and other areas. But its prevailing rules and perceptions, set by modern European powers or centuries-old systems designed in imperial days for much larger oceans, need to be revised. His project on maritime politics in the Mediterranean also aims to make the sea visible again to the eyes of its citizens today.

Clinical Dietician May Sakr, with 20 years of experience at AUBMC’s Department of Clinical Nutrition, speaks music to our ears when she advises us to “enjoy what makes you happy” – but she simultaneously speaks science when she says that while we eat what pleases us we must also balance among all the food groups and exercise regularly. She explains both the commercial and cultural dimensions of how we eat and the basic rules of healthy nutrition.

What do we know about the status of women in leadership positions in business? We now know quite a lot, thanks to Dr Lama Moussawi, tenured associate professor and associate dean for research and faculty development at the Olayan School of Business, and her colleagues at the Center for Inclusive Business and Leadership for Women. Three years ago they launched the center to find out exactly how women fared in this realm, and how more women could be hired, promoted, and retained. She explains the results of their regional research in 11 Arab countries, what they know about why women are not treated as well as men, why inclusive companies do better than non-inclusive ones, and how they plan to expand women’s roles in business and leadership in the years ahead.

The career of Professor Salma Talhouk in the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management, started as a biodiversity conservation ‘lab scientist’, and has transformed her into a ‘people scientist’. She explains her journey as one of understanding that we protect nature by getting people to directly enjoy nature. This requires changing behavior by understanding the drivers and contexts of people’s lives, which is more challenging in today’s mostly urbanized societies. So she seeks small victories in raising people’s awareness and enjoyable experiences, even at the level of home balconies. She launched the AUB Botanic Gardens, having already directed the AUB Nature Conservatory, and now plans innovative projects like tapping grandparents as a positive resource, developing apps that raise people’s awareness and enjoyment of nature, and interpreting the songs of Fairuz that touch on Lebanon’s natural beauty and diversity.

Associate Professor and Psychiatry Department Chair Dr Fadi Maalouf expects a mental health pandemic to hit Lebanon and the Middle East after the COVID crisis recedes –at a time when just 5 percent of mental health patients receive treatment, compared to 50 percent globally. In this episode he reviews the growing worry and anxiety symptoms among children and adults, and explains why schools are so critical in addressing this trend. It’s normal to experience heightened distress and negative feelings in today’s conditions, he notes, but adds that such common mental health issues are treatable. Many people do not take advantage of mental health counselling due to cost and lack of availability, not shame, he says.