Talk:American University of Beirut

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2021 and 1 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Andrea Tarabay.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Riadjamal.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:03, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled

If this 'Taken from AUB official site http://www.aub.edu.lb ( Copyrights reserved )' is true, then this page is a copyright violation. Can the person who copied this page from there confirm whether or not they have permission to use it? Morwen 20:57, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

AUB official site states clearly in its copyrights page the following:

"Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of the materials on the AUB Web is granted if the following conditions are met:

• copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage
• the AUB copyright and its date appear on the reproduced materials notice is given that copying is by permission of AUB

For some materials, it may be necessary to obtain additional copyright permission from the author(s).

To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission."

I think that the conditions are met here so we can post the informaiton on the AUB site. read more on http://www.aub.edu.lb/aub_files/copyright.html and http://www.aub.edu.lb/aub-online/history/index.html
Regards, May05 13:10, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's incompatible with the Wikipedia licence, which allows commercial use. Morwen 14:18, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

(comment repeated from my talk page) It looks like the copyright on the earlier text is not compatable with GFDL as is; see: Wikipedia:Copyrights. We already have an external link to there anyway. You might wish to summerize some of the key points in your own words for the article. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 18:07, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

How did the U. fair during the civil war? Wasn't it a haven at times for ex-pats? Can anyone comment on the campus activities during the civil war?--70.181.216.10 13:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Robert Najemy assassination

It would be helpful if someone could find the source for the statement that Robert Najemy was killed by "Gavin Harris", and that Robert Najemy's killer was an American. Robert Najemy's children have told me that this is wrong that the killer was identified as someone named Najim Najim (this is probably a bad transliteration), who was not an American. I'm unable to immediately find any information outside of wikipedia on Robert Najemy's killer.

Cesoid (talk) 04:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19760218-01.2.20&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- 194.126.31.19 (talk) 11:26, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Update

Because there is no citation and I know several people who say that "Gavin Harris" is incorrect, I'm changing the name despite have no source to cite myself. Since the other details about the killer were written by the same author that called him Gavin Harris, it is all suspect, and I removed everything except that he was "irate" and that his name was in fact Najim Najim.

Cesoid (talk) 03:10, 25 March 2008 (UTC) I am Robert Najemy Jr., Robert Najemy's son. He was not killed by an American but by a Palestinian Student name Najim Najim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:9808:4A70:3815:1651:DB68:438D (talk) 18:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "MO" :
  • [[Michael Oren]] (2007). ''Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Company) p. 218.
  • [[Michael Oren]] (2007). ''Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Company) p. 217.

DumZiBoT (talk) 06:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

capitalization

I changed all names of schools, faculties etc. to capital letters in accordance with wikipedia guidelines (proper nouns as institutions, consistency).--Kojozone (talk) 11:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Sports

There is no mention to the AUB's sports department and its achievements. In the [Lebanese Premier League] section on wiki it says that AUB's team won many trophies in the late 30s. Furthermore, the Rugby and Basketball teams have all had their successes at national/international level. The Charles Hostler center is also worth a mention here. Any contributors? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.42.160.232 (talk) 09:15, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Student activism

i found no notion about the most important thing in AUB: student activism and the role it played in the lebanese politics

many lebanese and arab political activities started from aub... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.108.170.40 (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Removing non-notable people from the alumni section

User:Off2riorob just removed a bunch of unlinked or redlinked names. I do the same thing on other articles, so I thought I'd add my standard message here explaining why we do this:

1. Per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of information.
2. Per WP:V, information on Wikipedia should be verified in independent, reliable sources. None of the removed names had verification that they went to NIT or held the positions that were listed.
3. Per WP:BLP, we must take extra care with any information about living persons in any article. Sourcing requirements for living persons are especially stringent, so this essentially takes the previous point and amplifies it.

So, in order to be listed here, a person should either 1) have their own wikipage or 2) have a reliable source (as delineated in WP:RS) explaining why the person is more notable than the average graduate. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Although I agree that some of those listed under the former 'notable alumni' were 'controversial' (to say the least), many - or to be precise most - of them not only did have a wikipedia page, they are well known prime ministers, members of parliaments, architects, lawyers, business entrepreneurs and much more. I wonder on what basis you deleted them ALL and how shall we retrieve the previous list now to be able to triage??? JAR (talk) 05:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC) I omitted to say that many of the them were actually dead. And second, if this is the policy why isn't it applied to the page on AUC, see 'notable alumni'? JAR (talk) 05:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

CAMES in lead

I am going to remove this, for several reasons: (1) it is from a press release by the university (2) it is based an the views of 63 students, not some study (3) it is not about the school of middle east studies as a whole, but only about a summer program teaching English. Jeff Song (talk) 18:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

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Bombs

All this bombing, terrorism, assassinations of staff should be mentioned. For starters, see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/03/world/beirut-journal-us-angel-of-mercy-stayed-for-a-merciless-war.html?mcubz=1

Zezen (talk) 06:50, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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NPOV and factual inaccuracy in History

The article section shows a few recent edits that we can infer are meant to make the university look bad, breaching NPOV. I'm highlighting them here after ElKevbo ask me to refrain from editing as an AUB employee, although I was trying to to be factual and neutral).

• Delete paragraph about initial response to COVID-19, unnecessary detail.
• Update sentence about staff layoffs, which predicted a larger proportion of redundancies than eventually occurred.
• Correct sentence saying "AUB raised its tuition fees." Because the collapse of the LBP university adjusted the USD exchange rate but left the dollar cost the same, so local currency payers only saw the 160% increase. At the same time the university announced a more than doubling of financial aid so the tuition payers without access to USD could pay the new rate.
• Suggest dropping December 2020 student protest as unnecessary in the broad sweep of AUB history. Protests were small, if aggressive, with most of the protesters not being AUB students.

Wording and references are in the edit history and I suggest they be checked and re-added by neutral third party user. Thanks. CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 06:49, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

In the absence of discussion, I'm going to fix the two inaccuracies, about the layoffs and the exchange rate, and leave the others to others. CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 19:31, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

No. You have an undeniable conflict of interest and should not be editing contentious issues in this article.

It would be helpful if you could make very concrete proposals here in Talk so that other editors can evaluate and potentially carry them out. ElKevbo (talk) 19:56, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I've been advised by WP admin Johnuniq that being employed by the university does not preclude me from editing the article as there is no reason to believe I'm paid to edit a particular article in a particular manner—and it's true, I'm not. I was just told to avoid edit war which I'm fine with. I'm also happy to explain again what I'm doing.

• The article quoted a interview that projected 22-25% of AUB staff would be made redundant ("fired" in the POV wording of the article) but this turned out to be an overestimate. As the cited reference shows, the actual number was 850 jobs cut, including 650 compulsory redundancies, which is a significantly smaller percentage.
• Saying tuition was raised by 160% is not a complete picture. AUB announced it was adopting a different exchange rate that meant those paying in the local currency (which has lost more than 80% of its value in the past year) would be charged 160% more. But it is only fair to point out that the university announced a big increase in financial support at the same time so those without access to non-Lebanese currency would be able to stay enrolled. CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

If Johnuniq has said that - I have not seen where he said that - then I think that he's wrong. In any case he has no special authority to make this kind of decision and we can discuss this at the appropriate noticeboard if you'd like opinions from other editors.

Can you please propose the specific changes that you'd like to see in this article? Not a description of the changes or a justification/explanation but the actual, exact wording of the language you'd like to see inserted into this article in place of or in addition to what is currently in it. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 20:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Sure, it's in the talk on Fadlo_R._Khuri if you'd like to discuss it. So my proposal, which I already inserted (sorry!) is as follows: 1. "The following month, Khuri announced that AUB would "fire 22-25%" of its staff due to severe financial difficulties." replaced by "In July, the university announced it was cutting 850 jobs, including 650 staff layoffs and a further 200 employees not having their contracts renewed or taking retirement and not being replaced." 2. "Later that same year, in December, AUB raised its tuition fees by 160% as the administration decided to peg its dollar-priced tuition to the 3900 LBP-USD exchange rate instead of the official 1515 rate." replaced by "Later that same year, AUB adjusted the LBP-USD exchange rate at which its dollar-pegged tuition was charged, from an official rate of 1,515 LBP to the dollar to a 3,900 LBP rate used by banks for electronic transactions. The adjustment translated into a 160% increase for those settling bills in the local currency. The university announced it would increase financial support to students to more than $90 million in 2021 to help those struggling to pay tuition fees." CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 20:38, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see what you had written here before I took a stab at editing the article myself to incorporate some of your previous edits. Take a look at what I've done and let me know what you think. ElKevbo (talk) 20:46, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that works. Thanks for the guidance. I'm pretty new here but enjoying it. As for the COI thing, I'm trying to ensure a neutral, factual reference for people to get to know a university that I love as well as work at. Things have been polarized in the last 1&1/2 years and it's clear to me some people have taken advantage of WP editing functionality to trash the university. I'm just trying to stop that from happening in as transparent a way as possible. I hope you will remain engaged and we can continue to collaborate. CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 21:02, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

References

History section amendments

The history section is quite uneven. I suggest deleting the following paragraph about initial responses to COVID-19 pandemic which hardly rates as a landmark event. "After initially announcing... studying COVID-19 pandemic related issues."

Suggest also expanding and amending the account of the bombing of College Hall "In November 1991, a bomb ... on the 125th anniversary of the school's founding." There's a good account at (archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199905/back.to.the.new.college.hall.htm) that talks about the rebuilding and corrects some of the details, namely that it was not actually bombed on the 125th anniversary, but a few weeks before. Also I believe the Lewis Affair (1882) and the student activism merits inclusion in any history of AUB. (https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Shafik-Jeha/dp/9953901902). I will compose these and include them here for discussion. CorneliusVanDyck (talk) 13:00, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Changes in History Section

Hello, I hope this is the right place to bring this up. I was very disappointed to log in and see user:CorneliusVanDyck involved in the removing and adjustment of parts of the history section within AUB's articles. His appeal to "fairness" and "neutrality" seems to be an entirely disingenuous attempt to rewrite history and reality under the POV that is most suitable to him. The paragraphs that had been added to the History section were properly cited and represented an important part of AUB's modern history. Attempting to downplay their magnitude and their level of detail is an affront to neutrality and is a full display of subjectivity. If user:CorneliusVanDyck who both has a stated of conflict of interest and has named his account after a former AUB President is so intent on rewriting AUB's history the least he could do is provide proper sources that go beyond their own personal opinion. I have significant changes to propose but I'm not sure if this is the right place to talk about this. I will suggest one thing and that is the opening of a Controversies subsection to deal with the various issues in AUB's history if the history section is not the proper place to bring this up. Thank you. Beirxt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beirxt (talk • contribs) 14:21, March 30, 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this is the appropriate to discuss suggested changes to the history section of this article. It's rarely appropriate to add a separate "Controversies" section to an article. Instead, we should focus on placing noteworthy controversies into helpful context; this usually occurs in the history section but can sometimes be better placed elsewhere if the controversy was limited to a specific topic already discussed in the article. ElKevbo (talk) 21:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

1991 explosion

re member of staff killed: “The perpetrators [..] went out of their way to avoid inflicting casualties by detonating the bomb in the early ours of the morning (the concierge who was killed would not normally have been sleeping in the building).”

re Abd al-Nabih: killed in a Hizbullah attack on an SLA checkpoint in Beit Yahoun on 4 October 1992. Padres Hana (talk) 12:52, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

from the Jansen 22 November report:

- the car bombing of College Hall

- Two Lebanese University employees were killed

- Univesity President Herter: “simply an attack on the United States”

- Prime Minister Karami: “only Israel profited from the operation”

- Shaikh Fadlallah condemned the bombing

- a quarter to a third of AUB students Shi’ite. “most on scholarship”

Padres Hana (talk) 15:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• American University of Beirut.jpg

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• New logo of the American University of Beirut.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Notable Alumni

Why are only female alumni mention? This is very odd. Please correct this. van Lustig (talk) 20:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean? The notable alumni section contains mainly women. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

History confusion

In the third sentence of the third paragraph of the History section, it reads "On January 18, 1984, AUB President Malcolm H. Kerr was murdered outside his office by members of Islamic Jihad, which preceded the Hezbollah."

There are two problems here. First, "Islamic Jihad" should be changed to "Islamic Jihad Organization" so that it won't be confused with PIJ, the Salafi group associated more with Palestine than Lebanon.

Second, Hezbollah does not require an indefinite article. While "Hezbollah" means the Party of God, very rarely do English sources call it "the Hezbollah" but rather just Hezbollah.ItsRainingCatsAndDogsAndMen (talk) 17:58, 28 September 2024 (UTC)