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AUB Welcomes Free Thinking for the New Term
October 13, 2009, The Daily Star (Lebanon)
American University of Beirut president Peter Dorman started off the 2009-10 academic year with a reminder to the students and faculty of the 143-year-old institution that the endeavor upon which they were embarking—a liberal education, for themselves and for their students—came with no small amount of responsibility. “It can be argued that the greatest failures—world wars, regional conflicts, genocide, persistent poverty, extremist ideological movements—may be defined as failures of a liberal education,” he said. Dorman cited education experts and scholars and argued that the purpose of an education is not simply to offer professional training, but to evoke curiosity and judgment and teach students to solved complicated problems.
“If we speak of training competent leaders for tomorrow, let us also speak of training leaders who are also thinkers, critics, and humanists,” he said. Dorman issued a challenge to his faculty colleagues at AUB: “I would urge my colleagues on the AUB faculty to teach at least one thing of no immediate practical value,” he said. “Something useless, if you will; to ask questions that have no correct answers, and perhaps cannot be answered at all; to pose quandaries or moral choices that engage the mind in impractical but otherwise crucial ways.”
Read the entire text of Dorman’s comments here.
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