The Twenty-First Research Report of the American University of Beirut represents a watershed in our institution’s recent history. We know that even during the most torn and troubled years of civil strife in Lebanon, when serious disruptions reached and sorely affected our campus community, scholarly research and writing never ground to a complete halt. Now, however, with a climate of stability of a kind that had not existed in Beirut for some twenty years, that scholarly research and writing have truly flowered.
This volume indicates research activity from July 1993 to June 1995 engaged in by the faculty, by the scholar-teachers who preside over the education of our students. It is more than twice as long as the last Report and thus reveals at a glance the burst of creativity and the outpouring of ideas that even relative peace permits and nurtures. The beginning of the return of AUB to its pre-war level of distinction is heralded in these pages.
| Robert M. Haddad | |
| President |