Broadened Horizons: AUB, a melting Pot and a Haven of tolerance and service
A melting Pot
"Many students come from cities of Iraq and Syria, as well as from big centers like Haifa, Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria. Others come from the small towns and prosperous villages of the country."
"For years the Alawites of the Lataqiyah region did not send their children to modern schools. Recently a number of the families have started to send their boys to Beirut."
Reports of 1941-1942, Near East Service Quarterly, V3, NO3, October 1942. In AA2.3.4.1.1/BAYARD DODGE/BOX 4
There are also many Armenian students, whose families have been evacuated from Turkey and form part of an "Armenian Captivity" in Syria and Lebanon."
Reports of 1941-1942, Near East Service Quarterly, V3, NO3, October 1942. In AA2.3.4.1.1/BAYARD DODGE/BOX 4
Service to the Community
The Village Welfare Program of the summer of 1942 was unexpectedly successful and everything promises that there will be an equally good season of work in 1943. The students have also carried on night schools and other forms of work in the city, during term time. In addition to the war work and health activities, the University is able to take part in many forms of public service. Members of the faculty serve on the Municipal Council and help with the National Museum, local schools and churches, orphanages, the tourist traffic, hospitals and sanatoria, charity clinics, and other forms of philanthropy.
"During the past year the young doctors and students of the medical school have been unusually active. They have studied the mosquitoes of nine villages...and also determined the spleen indices of school children in the malarial regions of the Beirut river and Anjar...the measures taken in the Anjar and the Beirut River regions has reduced malaria by 50%...With the help of the American Field Service, the interns have inoculated 3,400 people against typhoid in 20 villages. Usually the small pox vaccine was also given. The Ministry of Health of the Lebanon helped to direct this work."
Report of the President of the American University of Beirut for the Seventy-Seventh Year, 1942-1943: p 6