USCFL - Speech of Rector Sélim Abou s.j., on Key Lebanese Issues

Who among us doesn't worry about the war on Iraq, and doesn't fear its national and local consequences ?

Who among us doesn't rejoice about the manifestations of Lebanese unanimity against the use of force in violation of international law ?

Who among us doesn't appreciate Lebanese-Syrian solidarity against foreign threats ?

Who among us doesn't wish for this solidarity to be a prelude to the clearing of bilateral relations ?

Who doesn't sense the ambiguity of lavish praise in the form of a good behavior certificate granted to the Maronite patriarch and bishops by yesteryear's detractors ?

Who doesn't see that, until further notice, Lebanese-Syrian solidarity is more akin to subordination than common deliberation ?

Who doesn't know that Lebanon's political situation has not changed, and that the call for independence is only temporarily subdued ?

Who doesn't believe our duty towards memory, the duty to remember recent negative developments so that they do not repeat themselves ?

Negative developments are not merely political. They are equally academic and cultural, and this is where I would like to start.

In all the public addresses that I have pronounced since 1996, either on the occasion of the patronal anniversary of the University, or on commencement day, I have always underlined, under various forms, the three essential functions of any University worth its name: the scientific and human formation of students, the promotion of national culture, the defense of public and individual freedoms. At the same time, I have expressed without fail the requirements needed by a correct implementation of these functions. Within this perspective, I have summarized on the occasion of the 125th Anniversary the vocation of Saint Joseph’s University in a formula which has become since a motto for many professors and students, by affirming that USJ is and must remain a pole of excellence, a high place of culture, and a space of liberty.

In all these addresses and with no exception, I have insisted on the critical dimension of our action. At the pedagogical level first, for if the University has for objective to pass on knowledge, it also has the task of stimulating reflection on the relative value of this knowledge and its incidence on the future of mankind. At the social level secondly, for if the University is called upon to adapt to the changing needs of society, it must also rely on a margin for maneuver which allows it to monitor its evolution. On the political level finally, for if the University forms future citizens who are conscious of their duties towards the State, it is also incumbent on it to defend their rights against the State. But when academic discourse is repressed and smothered, under the pretext that it harms academic spirit, social order or State security, such discourse becomes inevitably resistance.

If I have entitled the present talk the University's resistance, it is because, in the particularly grave circumstances that we are going through, St Joseph's seems to me confronted to three types of threats which emerge respectively at the academic, cultural and political levels. For us the question is to resist the collapse of higher education resulting from the cancerous proliferation of so-called universities; to resist the cultural mediocrity of a society which gives little attention to the projection of an image with a universal reach; to resist a political system that systematically ignores the aspirations of a people and relentlessly seeks to repress their expression.

The proliferation of private establishments in higher education is not unique to Lebanon; its manifestation covers many countries in the North and South; it is a result of the ultra-liberalism which characterizes the globalization of exchange and the internationalization of communication technology. In Lebanon however, the phenomenon reaches bewildering proportions. See for yourselves: as you know, for three quarters of a century, Lebanon had only two universities, both private, the American University of Beirut and Saint Joseph’s University, which constituted the administrative, economic and political framework of the nation. In 1951 a public university was established -- the Lebanese University. Ten years later were created two new universities. Between 1984 and 1996, some twenty universities were founded, and, between 1996 and 2000, another twenty. So much so that, for a population of some four million inhabitants, Lebanon has presently 42 higher education establishments. This is not all: there are no less than 30 requests awaiting the agreement of the Ministry of National Education and Higher Learning, some of which for new establishments, others for extensions of existing universities. It is said that these requests are supported by significant bribes. This may be the case.

Two remarks are necessary. The first is that, until 1996, universities were non-profit institutions; since that date a real "market of higher learning" has developed, a market at the mercy of collective investors, shareholders’ groups or commercial companies, Lebanese and foreign. Here also the phenomenon is not limited to Lebanon. In October 2002, Unesco experts observed that post-high school learning services were included in "the General Agreement on Services" of the World Trade Organization (WTO).[1] But they also noted that its incidence - good or bad - on the teaching systems of industrialized and developing nations posed a central problem, that of the certification of teaching standards. The problem is that Lebanon - this is my second remark- cares little for this issue. The plethoric development of universities is neither submitted to a national instance of regulation, nor to an international accreditation system. There follows that the ensemble of university institutions offers an incoherent picture that goes from respectable universities providing diplomas that are internationally recognized, to establishments which can be described, without the risk of being mistaken, as "diploma shops". Some wonder whether, under the guise of ultra-liberalism linked to globalization, an occult intention is not playing its part, a perverse wish to undermine private higher teaching in Lebanon. This may be the case.

The anarchistic proliferation of university institutions sets in train a competitive process which proposes to the student easy studies and easy access to diplomas as a sole criterion for the choice of establishment. Against this demagogic means, a university like ours can only oppose an additional search for excellence. It is precisely to this "overflow" of excellence that the "vision" of USJ invites us for the coming five years. I would like to remind you of the propositions this vision entails: "St Joseph's University undertakes : 1. to form the best students in the country and in the region and to provide them with a passport for employment; 2. to become a pole of excellence in research and innovation; 3. To favor dialogue through biculturalism and multilingualism; 4. To remain a place for reflection and for a comprehensive formation of the individual".[2] On the other hand, by adopting the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), the University seeks to develop interaction between the teacher and the student, and to establish a light structure which allows a control of the quality of teaching and to evaluate the work of the student. Hence the creation at the level of the University of a Pedagogical Council which will be called upon to evaluate the current processes and to establish a tutoring system in various institutions.

The reform under way requires a real change in attitude amongst both teachers and students. This change concerns first the pedagogical relationship and seeks to give more responsibilities to the student by making him co-actor in his own formation. Some professors worry that, by attributing a quarter or a third of the time to the personal work of the student, there remains only a little time for them to teach the fundamental concepts of the course at hand and to allow the student to assimilate it properly. This however is true only if the control of knowledge imparted is reduced to routine exams and reading assignments. The question is how to devise exercises that allow the student to envisage by himself a critical approach to fundamental concepts and relevant notions, and to proceed with a rigorous update of this exercise. The types of exercise required vary naturally depending on the course taught.

Reform concerns also the revision of programmes. When I was the dean of the Faculty of letters and human sciences, more than once I tried to convince the heads of department that the three years of license did not constitute a real period of specialization, and that it was necessary to allow, within the curriculum, the formation of a general culture, The heads of department defended their programmes with reference "to what was taking place in France." But France is imposing today what I was advocating fifteen years ago. In a document on "new perspectives for higher education", [3] the minister of national education, Luc Ferry, asks why the students who enter preparatory classes for the exam required by the Grandes Ecoles "continue to benefit from a general culture formation, whereas students who enter the first university cycle undertake immediately a specialization which comes too early… The gaps in general culture concern as much humanities as they concern scientific culture." However, he adds, "one must not apply teaching in preparatory classes to the one carried out in the first cycle, whereby disciplines are juxtaposed, but on the contrary build up a general culture formation relevant to the specialty that the student chooses to undertake." Finally, he invites teachers to think about the part of general culture which it will be necessary to integrate in the curriculum, within the framework of the ECTS.

Reform also concerns that which I would call the attention to multidisciplinarity, which is more than the practice of multidisciplinarity, regardless whether such attention takes place in the first cycle, in the formation of a general culture which is directed towards a specialty sought by the student, or whether it consists of an organized collaboration between disciplines at the level of research in the second and third cycles. Attention to multidisciplinarity denotes a mental attitude of the teacher, for which I found a good explanation in an article of the M.A.U.S.S. journal: "Disciplines are fully justified intellectually on the condition that they keep a vision that recognizes and supports connections and solidarity. They are moreover fully justified only if they do not suppress global realities. For instance, the notion of man finds itself divided amongst several biological disciplines, and amongst all human sciences…. The issue in fact is about the multiple aspects of a complex reality, but their meaning is fulfilled only if they are connected with this reality instead of ignoring it. Of course, one cannot create a unitary science for man that would dissolve the complex multiplicity of what is human. The most important dimension is not to forget that man exists and is not a 'naïve' illusion of pre-scientific humanists. One would otherwise reach an absurd situation."[4]

Here are then, briefly enunciated, some of the imperatives tied to the increased search for excellence, the only form of resistance to the collapse of higher education in Lebanon. This is not all, since academic collapse doubles up as cultural mediocrity the more seriously since, in this country as in others, culture and not economics is the immediate substructure of the political world. This means that cultural mediocrity leads inevitably to political decay, which is the source of all alienation. But can one speak of cultural mediocrity ? Has Beirut not been declared "the cultural capital of the Arab world" in 1999 ? Has Lebanon not hosted last year the Arab and Francophone summits ? Is it not every year the organizer of several book fairs, including "Lire en français et en musique" ? Does it not host every year several international seminars in all fields of knowledge ? Is it not the privileged site of technological and artistic exhibits ? Has it not reanimated the tradition of international festivals in drama, music and dance ? These manifestations are certainly important. They remind the world that Lebanon exists, but, in all appearance, it matters little to the world whether it exists for itself or as a window to Syria.

Real culture does not happen from the outside to a people who simply receives it. It hails from a permanent and emotional intellectual excitement, it develops within a people, and reflects their deepest soul. It is a creation of specific models which carry universal values. It is the multiform expression of a common aspiration to the absolute. It is a particular language of human freedom. By nature, it rebels against all forms of oppression. Were it to stop doing so, it would gets alienated and would dry up, it would allow serfdom to be relished. Two periods in our Lebanese history illustrate the liberating function of culture. The first occurred upon the birth of an autonomous Lebanon under Emir Fakhreddin.

In Un siècle pour rien, Ghassane Tueini underlines the decisive importance of that Lebanese principality, "an Ottoman province in fact, but with its own relations with foreigners... This principality entertained cultural and commercial ties which were independent from the Ottoman imperial authority, and were in effect against it. Here one finds, since the 17th century, the titles of glory for Great Lebanon and the Lebanese Republic."[5]

The second period, which announces the end of Ottoman domination, is that of the Nahda. We know about the process, under which the renewal of Arab letters and thought pioneered by the Lebanese, and the influence of western culture, gave birth to the National Arab feeling, defined by resistance and the joint Christian and Muslim opposition to Ottoman tyrannical domination. In the movement of liberation which followed, the role of universities was evident. "The feeling of a common nationality against the Turks," wrote the Orientalist Brockelmann, could rise under the influence of the powerful French culture, rooted in the coastal regions for over a century, and the democratic ideas disseminated by the American University of Beirut."[6]

What role can the University play today in the formation of a culture of resistance against a culture of servility which is gaining ground ? Three words define it, which are embedded in the "vision" of USJ for the coming five years: the University must remain a pole of reflection, research and innovation. Reflection is the enemy of slogans; reflection requires an intellectual effort, slogan shows mental laziness; reflection seeks clarity, slogan wallows in confusion; reflection requires courage, slogan is content with cowardice. Since what is known as the Taef Accord, Christians and Muslims say they are favorable to political deconfessionalisation, without taking the pain of knowing what they say, without trying to remove the grave ambiguities of the slogan, the hidden thoughts it covers, and the consequences that derive from it, because they fear that an effort of clarification would lead to polemics.

A remarkable example of that reflection and the courage it supposes is offered by the words of the late Imam Shamseddine on this very subject: "Political deconfessionalisation is one of the permanent slogans of Lebanese political life. We had adopted it, the Superior Shi'i Council had adopted it, I myself had adopted it for long years. We tried under various guises and in collaboration with others, to make the slogan clearer in a project related to a Lebanese political system which would not be founded in confessionalism. I elaborated my own project in the field, namely, the project of "the democracy of numbers based on the principle of consultation". Since then, I have thought deeply about the nature of Lebanese society, the entities that form it, and the parliamentary democratic system which obtains from the particularities resulting from the diversity of communities. I have reflected a lot about the Lebanese crisis, the hidden thoughts which underlie the proposals of the leaders of the communities, whether these leaders are political, religious or intellectual, while taking into account the differences that separate them. It dawned on me that the political deconfessionalisation in Lebanon, and the abrogation of the communitarian system would lead to an adventurism which might threaten the future of Lebanon and its stability, and which might lead to circumstances favoring the search by one party or another of foreign support, and the intervention therefore of this or that foreign power. This is why I beseech the Lebanese Shi'is and the Lebanese in general to eliminate the theme of political deconfessionalisation from political action and discourse; this is not say that we should prevent them from thinking about it and yearning for it, but this is a long-term project, which requires decades to come about, and depends on the evolution of Lebanese society and societies in neighboring Arab countries."[7]

Reflection cannot always operate without real research. A lucid and courageous attitude might suffice to demystify the slogan of political deconfessionalisation. The matter is different when it concerns reform projects relative to society and state, which require comparative theoretical studies and sometimes field investigations. On 19 March 1999, I have solemnly called for those who head faculties and institutes to constitute specialized committees, if need be pluri-disciplinary ones, that would prepare and publish draft projects on themes subject to reform and capable of enlightening public opinion. "Today," I said at the time, "St Joseph's University is called upon to distinguish itself by a new product, less descriptive, more normative and decidedly critical. It has the moral obligation to enlighten the legislator and public opinion on the most pertinent options in matter of reform, be they the electoral law, administrative decentralization, regional development, the relationship between political communitarism and differentiated citizenship, civil legislation for personal status, public health policy or the protection of the environment."[8] I then proposed three regulatory principles which seem to me necessary to these studies, I shall not repeat them here.

Research has developed considerably at the University, and one can only be pleased about it. It is important that the University has created a technological pole (Berytech) which opens to its graduates the way to the creation of business ventures and which, more generally, facilitates the value of research. It is important that the University publishes comparative Arab legal studies and that it lets Arab countries know about the sources of their rights, for this is an answer to the permanent vocation of Lebanon in the world within which it operates. It is important that the University publishes the results of cutting edge and clinical research in medical sciences, for it enhances its prestige, its capability, and its growing influence in the field of public health. It is important that the University participates in research on water and the environment within a network of Northern and Southern scientific labs supported by the European Union, for its mission is also to be an active member of the international university community. And so on…

There are other types of research which are both necessary and urgent. The comprehensive study completed by the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences on "Emigration and the entry of the youth in active life" illustrates the effort, which is expensive in many ways. It is sometimes necessary to offer the necessary elements to the elaboration of powerfully argued draft projects of importance to public discussion and debate. This type of research is compelling if one wants Lebanon not to be caught unawares once freed, and called upon to re-organize a society which was fractured by the occupying power and its collaborators.

The culture of resistance does not only feed upon reflection and research, but needs first and foremost innovation. Innovation requires us to be rid of old or traditional ways of thinking, so that we can free the deepest reaches of our souls, these depths where intelligence, imagination and sensibility meet, the unusual expression of our ideals, namely our patriotic ideals. These ideals are capable, because of their originality and quality, of drawing the attention of the free world and to arouse its interest for this country, which is arbitrarily occupied by a foreign power, and for a people passionately fond of freedom. As I was telling the Alumni Federation members recently, there are many ways to resist oppression: specific actions, well prepared, difficult to predict, spectacular; or symbolic actions that rifle butts and water cannons cannot reach, as well as intellectual activities which are susceptible of enlightening the various options or reinforcing established convictions.

It was easier to convince students since they had in some ways preceded me. They merely needed to intensify an effort of imagination already started. Let me cite what one of them, Michel Hajji Georgiou, wrote in L'Orient-le Jour on December 31st: "Demonstrations are no doubt a frightening and necessary way, and the student movement cannot abandon them. From the students' perspective, they carry a dual function: to continue occupying public space in the street in order to enhance demands and increase the silent majority's awareness. These demonstrations face however the repression of armed forces and are generally snubbed by students who lack commitment or who fear for their physical health." But, he says, "there are other ways to resist." By way of symbolic actions organized by the USJ students, he reminds us of "the day of solidarity with agriculture workers to denounce Syrian illicit competition", and the sale of "Lebanese fruit and vegetable in the street, to protest against this competition". By way of cultural resistance he writes: "The number of seminars and debates organized by the students on political, economic, social or cultural issues has reached a climax in 2002. The USJ students have been particularly innovative in the organization, on December 10, of the Charles Malek day in celebration of the culture of human rights."[9]

I signaled to the students the particular importance of writing: the publication, in the local and foreign press, of quality articles against injustice and oppression, but also the creation of literary, artistic and cinematographic works that get known and transmit a similar message. One forgets that during the Nahda, the resistance to Ottoman tyranny found its expression in novels, poems and plays, and received French support and solidarity. At the time, the flavor was epic and somewhat grand. Nowadays, the most striking literary genre is perhaps the satire or farce. Let young people try their hand at it. After all, Alfred Jarry was fifteen when he wrote Ubu Roi, that famous play in which, under the cover of a funny and caricature-like farce, he denounces human stupidity, cowardice and cruelty.

I think I also reminded students that, in central Europe under Soviet domination, the protagonists of resistance were writers. I like to cite here one of them, Vaclav Havel, upon receiving the Erasmus Prize in 1986. By referring to Eramus’ famous Praise of Folly, he said: " What I recommend here is the courage of being mad, mad in the most beautiful meaning of the word." Then, referring to himself and his companions in resistance, he continued: "Is it not a madman who is honored today, and through him, are not dozens and hundreds also honored who, by calling separately to change the immutable, do not hesitate to spend years in prison and are ready, in the craziest manner, to oppose the enormous power of state and police bureaucracy with the desultory power of their typewriter ?"[10] In 1989, Vaclav Havel was elected president of liberated Czechoslovakia. A year later, he was invited to speak before the Senate of neighboring Poland, and addressed his Polish companions of resistance: "Do you recall, Adam Michnik, Jacite Kesron and Jan Lytinski, our first clandestine meeting at the Czech-Polish border ? We were, you and us, so-called dissidents, men followed by the police, jailed people who were made a laughing stock. Of course we also laughed at our gaolers and were happy to escape, but if someone had told us that ten years later, we would be deputies, ministers and presidents, we would have laughed even more at him. And yet this is what happened."[11]

Whether it concerns the reflection destined to demystify the slogans that nourish political discourse, the research needed to define a vision of a liberated Lebanon and the reform projects that it implies, or the innovation invested in all forms of struggle for liberation, cultural resistance is one of the essential aspects of political resistance. It is of course not for us an armed resistance, but resistance through a pacific means which is sometimes more effective: the word. One should not estimate the weight given to words by the corrosive charge of criticism, irony or humor. In Spain, a suggestive word designates all those who, because of their naivety, stupidity or greed, voluntarily or involuntarily betray their country: they are called "vendepatria", sellers of their country. I propose to describe for our vendepatrias and in the hope of shaking their conscience, the mechanisms of alienation, the mechanisms of servitude, and the mechanisms of terror for which they are, willingly or not, the accomplices. A few months before the end of my tenure, I do not wish to engage the University, my words only engage me, but I wish to rely on the trust which has brought me to that position.

History provides several examples of occupied countries, whose leaders thought it would be good, for the sake of their people, to deal with the occupier. They did not realize that, by doing so, they were putting their fingers in the fatal machine of alienation. The best known case is that of France in 1940. Philippe Pétain sacrificed himself and took over the reins of the state. One knows how he had to gradually accept all the requirements of the occupier: the constitution of a network of collaborators, the promulgation of Anti-Semitic laws, the formation of a pro-Nazi militia and of a similarly ugly secret police, and finally the violation of the armistice and the occupation of the whole territory of France. After the collapse of the dominant state, this hero of the War of 1914-1918, this grand maréchal de France was condemned to death, a penalty commuted into jail for life. He finally collapsed into the abyss of history.

It is clear that the Syrian presence in Lebanon has changed into a straight occupation, since the clause in the Taef Accord which required the withdrawal of the Syrian army and its intelligence services two years after the formation of a Lebanese government, over a decade ago, was ignored. The control of the occupying power has progressively increased to the point of paralyzing all of our country's institutions or perverting them for its benefit. The shameless manipulation of legislative elections has brought to Parliament a majority of deputies who are subservient to Syria, including janitors who have become deputies upon the simple wish of the Damascene wali in Anjar, as noted in an article by Jihad az-Zein in an-Nahar.[12] From then on everything became possible. The army was marginalized in favor of a resistance movement directly under the command of Damascus and in agreement with its strategic options, as is shown also in the article.[13] The credibility of the justice system was undermined by the continuous interventions of Syria and its vassals, as is recognized by the former president of the Higher Judicial Council, and the brother of the Lebanese president, Nasri Lahoud.[14] The Constitutional Council disqualified itself by invalidating the election of a deputy shunned by his brother who was close to the head of state and a vassal of Syria, and by putting in his place a substitute who had received 2 % of the vote. "What is the use of one further deputy seat," commented Talal Selmane, the editor of as-Safir, "if we have lost the highest guarantee of democratic practice ?"[15]

To the alienation of the state corresponds the enslavement of civil society. "We know what happened to the Lebanese," writes Daniel Rondeau in l'Express. They are subjected to Syrian occupation, with American support, in total indifference to the acute violation of international legality."[16] If this is the case, it is in great part because Syria has succeeded in convincing foreign powers that the Lebanese are incapable of governing themselves and that, without its tutelage, they would kill each other again. It is not difficult to prove it, for Syria has so well fractured Lebanese society that it can at any time provoke domestic troubles to support its thesis. When it considers that necessary, it does not hesitate, and one should believe, until the contrary is proven, that Syria does not want to relinquish its power over Lebanon. In the past, we were told that it would withdraw its army and intelligence services as soon as the Israelis will have left South Lebanon. Then we were assured that it could not withdraw before signing a regional peace treaty. Now we are informed that "even after peace, Syrian presence could remain necessary, in order to protect the disposition included in the treaty, and which subversive parties would be tempted to undermine."[17]

One cannot blame the occupant from wishing to consolidate its domination or use to this effect the complicity of collaborators whose servility he must scorn. But one can question the Syrian regime and its local allies about taking the Lebanese for a people of fools. Jaded as they may be, their maneuvers are no less naïve, so much so that no one can be duped. To arrange the reception, pretending it was warm, of a high-level Damascus delegation in the heart of the Mountain, to force into forgetfulness the remarkable druzo-maronite meeting two years earlier, to transform a traditional party, which was always the party of independence, into the party of submission, and to entrust it to a leader who allows himself to give all kinds of lessons to Christians; to create, instead of party dissolved officially, a substitute with the same name, headed also by a former resistant who has converted to collaboration; finally to find docile Christian deputies to counter the Gathering of Kornet Chahwan, is to show increasing unease in the face of opposition, and behind the opposition, of a whole people, whose capital sin is to request the recovery of Lebanon's independence and sovereignty. No, the Lebanese people are not fools, and they have not sold their soul.

The enslavement of civil society is naturally accompanied by a campaign of terror. One knows its classic manifestations: brutal repression, arbitrary imprisonment, judicial harassment, covered threats. The state servants can be innovative. To shut down a television station which favors the opposition, under the pretext that it undermines civil peace, while throwing onto the street over three hundred families of the station's employees; to cancel a demonstration of the Kornet Chahwan Gathering by announcing a counter-manifestation, under the pretext of refusing at the same time both requests to demonstrate; to mobilize a group of thugs to prevent a deputy of the opposition, a Northerner, from entering Tripoli, she who had the courage to denounce the defaming campaign of her enemies and to threaten denouncing them one by one. Here are, as a mere example, three illustrations of the inventive genius of the servants of the state. Essential for them is for every one to hear the message: Syria goes through a difficult moment, to request its withdrawal from Lebanon is a villainy which can only benefit the enemy.

Campaigns of terror help the establishment of dictatorship. The corruption of political discourse is at once a sign and an element. At high level, one preaches national understanding while preventing by all means the national dialogue which is sought by all parties from succeeding. One preaches the overcoming of confessionalism, while provoking artificially peripheral confessional discord; one preaches the sacred union of the nation, while seeking to divide it time and again. The responsibility, of course, is that of the citizens for it is sufficient, for this preaching to become true, that they align their words onto official discourse, and that they adopt the language of the power-that-be and the uniform thought that it seeks to impose on all. The domestic enemy is therefore the opposition. One authorized voice is nonetheless discordant. At the risk of upsetting Syria and its local allies, the Prime Minister does not hesitate: "The opposition is absolutely necessary, and its means of expression are protected by the Constitution and by law. I wish one gives the country a breathing space so that it can overcome the difficult moment it is going through."[18]

Opposition will remain so long as remains the ambiguity over the relations between Syria and Lebanon. One wishes that the recent changes were not only tactical, but a prelude to a strategic curve that aims at a balanced relationship between two countries equally independent and sovereign. Meanwhile, I repeat that it was our duty towards memory to denounce the negative developments which have undermined the privileged relations between the two countries.

Dear friends, I will no longer have an opportunity to address you from this dais, at least as rector. Men follow each another, they are not the same, but the institution remains, as does its vocation, intellectual, cultural, and national. It is the national vocation of Saint Joseph's University which, more than others, is being put today to a difficult trial. As the former president of the Bar, Chakib Cortbawi, has warned us, "One must face this new situation the objective of which is the existence of Lebanon. I am not talking geographically, I am talking about freedoms, sovereignty, democracy, unity, and the best possible relations with Syria, as equals…. The Lebanese have a duty: to stay upright, not to despair, to know they have a role to play for Lebanon to recover its independence. What role ? Not only to bring politicians to account, but to stop queuing in front of embassies, to learn to say no."[19] No to occupation, no to collaboration. Zola was right: "If there is a virtue to preserve, it is the virtue of indignation."

To say no has a positive counter-effect, which is "the possibility to repeat without fail what we desire", the president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel reminds us. "We can all," he says, "proclaim our ideals in a loud voice and actively try to make them prevail; we can all sacrifice also a good part of our personal happiness if we believe… that there are things which it is worth suffering for… In short, it is understandable for us that each one can change the world, even if he feels he has least importance and least power. This imperative is mysterious because it carries the fabulous idea that anyone amongst us could, so to speak, shake the world. And this is logical, because if I do not decide, or you, or he, or all of us, to undertake this course, the world we live in, the world that we contribute to create and for which we are responsible, the world will never be able to move." He concludes with the following sentence: "Let us try to be crazy and to ask in the most seriously possible way that what is unchangeable apparently changes."[20] In truth, the worst enemy is within us, it is the temptation to give up. In our situation, if there be one attitude we need to fight, it is the temptation to give up.

It is important for the opposition to consolidate, widen and not lose its central objective: the independence and the sovereignty of Lebanon. It is important that the silent majority which shares this ideal dare defy taboos and speak up. Let us make ours the declaration of faith of the great sociologist Raymond Aron: "We accept the risk of liberty and of democracy, we wager the belief that, despite it all, permanent discussion will not forbid civil peace, that the contradiction between individual interests will allow the emergence of decisions that are compatible with the well being of the nation. We prefer the disorder and noise of free societies to the apparent calm of the regimes where the wielders of supreme power pretend to the monopoly of truth and impose to their citizens-subject a course of thought and word a the same time as they impose a course of action. We choose societies where the opposition is considered a public service and not a crime."[21]

Let us learn to keep alive in us and around us the sense of freedom, the taste for freedom, the flame of freedom

[1] Kurt Larsen and Stephan Vincent-Lancrin, "Le commerce international de services d'éducation: est-il bon, est-il méchant ?", Unesco Document, forthcoming in Politiques et gestion de l'enseignement supérieur.

[2] USJ 2007, internal document elaborated by the University's Committee for strategic reflection.

[3] Luc Ferry, Minister of youth, national education and research, press conference, 7 October 2002.

[4] La revue du M.A.U.S.S. (Anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences), 10, 2nd semester 1997, "Guerre et paix entres les sciences. Disciplinarité, inter et transdisciplinarité", La Découverte, 26-27.

[5] Jean Lacouture, Ghassan Tueni, Gérard D. Khorury, Un siècle pour rien. Le Moyen-Orient arabe de l'Empire ottoman à l'Empire américain, Paris, Albin Michel, Itinéraires du savoir, 2002, 12.

[6] C. Brockelmann, Histoire des peuples et des états islamiques depuis l'origine jusqu'à nos jours, Tazerouth transl., Paris 1949, 397-98.

[7] Imam Sheikh Mahdi Shamseddin, al-Wasaya, Beirut, Dar an-Nahar, 2002, 51-53.

[8] S. Abou, Les Apports de l'Université, Publications de l'USJ 1999, 34-35.

[9] Michel Hajji Georgiou, "Mouvement estudiantin: 2003, année de la résistance 'culturelle'", L'Orient-le Jour, Rétrospective 2002, iii.

[10] Vaclav Havel, L'Angoisse de la liberté, Editions de l'aube 1994-5, 58.

[11] Id., 71.

[12] Jihad az-Zein, An-Nahar, 17 December 2002.

[13] Id.

[14] Nasri Lahoud, L'Orient-le Jour, 15 November 2002.

[15] Talal Selmane, As-Safir, 5 November 2002.

[16] Daniel Rondeau. L'Express, 17 October 2002.

[17] According to Emile Khoury, L'Orient-le Jour, 10 December 2002.

[18] A talk on the occasion of a lunch in his honour by the Alumni of International College, L'Orient-le Jour, 1 November 2002.

[19] Ziyad Makhoul, "Cortbawi: la priorité aujourd'hui ? Que l'opposition travaille unie," L'Orient-le Jour, 9 November 2002.

[20] Vaclav Havel, op. cit., 57-58.

[21] Raymond Aron, "Q'est-ce que le libéralisme ?", Commentaire 84, 1998-99, 945.

Article:	Speech of Rector Sélim Abou s.j., on Key Lebanese Issues
Author:	Rector Sélim Abou s.j.
Date:	March 2003

Would you like to comment on this article?