Mission citizens

Until the eruption of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, constructive Arab thinking in the mind of many observers appeared stifled and chained to the point of ineffectuality. This state of forced tutelage, it seems, was unbearable not only to the peoples on the often-quoted ‘Arab street’ — epitomized in Cairo’s Tahrir Square — but also for academic institutions such as the American University of Beirut (AUB) and business leaders such as Ayman Asfari, the main shareholder and chief executive of Petrofac, a rising corporation operating in the global oil services arena. AUB and the Asfari Foundation have teamed up in establishing the region’s first university-based center for civil rights and citizenship, the Asfari Institute. For gauging the scope and breadth of what the Asfari Institute might aspire to achieve it is a good starting point to note that for AUB President Peter Dorman, independent thinking may currently be emerging in new