Q&A: AUB’s president Peter Dorman

The venerable American University of Beirut (AUB) is preparing for a new spring of engendering broad leadership of civil societies in the countries of the Middle East. A recently announced institute is to be a core conduit for this ambitious challenge. Executive explored this in an exclusive interview with AUB President Peter Dorman. In the first announcement of the Asfari Institute, you said that it will bring together experts for dialogue, conduct research, and propose innovative ways forward. That sounded like a three-partite structure of conferencing, research and advocacy. Yes. Is this the essence of the plan and what other components does AUB hope to include in the project? Absolutely, and in addition to those three, we would ultimately like to put an emphasis on education. We would work this out in the years to come, but it is certainly part of our thinking to develop a master’s program that