12 June 2013

BEIRUT: The American University of Beirut is making a long overdue gesture to honor its students and alumni who helped author the United Nations Charter in 1945. When delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco in 1945 to sign the body’s founding treaty, 19 AUB former students and graduates attended the momentous drafting sessions, representing five countries: Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The President’s Club at AUB is honoring the 19 members who helped change history with an interactive exhibition that will run until June 21, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at West Hall.

The exhibition portrays a U.N. meeting, with the nameplates and flags of the five countries set out on a table with 19 chairs, along with an envelope containing documents in front of each seat.

It opened this week with a reception that hosted the family members of several of the honorees.

“This particular project is a special project,” AUB Provost Ahmad Dallal said during his introductory speech. “It’s unique. It’s not the usual type of contribution of the President’s Club, but, I think, ultimately, that it points to the future that awaits our students.”

Mona Chemali Khalaf, the chair of the President’s Club, noted that the body has offered various types of support for students since its establishment in 1981, but that this time, the members “wanted to highlight the importance of AUB students on the international level.”

After showing a video explaining the historical significance of the event and the involvement of the AUB students, the attendees had the opportunity to take a seat in one of the 19 chairs and open the relevant envelope.

“It’s a specialized exhibition,” said Ghaleb Mahmassani, the son of Sobhi Mahmassani, one of the five-person Lebanese delegation to San Francisco.

“It concerns a very important international event, the creation of the United Nations and the contributions of the Lebanese people, and [features] personal documents, personal belongings, like the photos and the postcards and even the menus and hotel where they were,” he added.

Christian Moussa, a graphic designer, helped put the event together in 20 days with AUB professor Cornelia Kraftt.

“The content itself was so naturally in place that it felt old, it felt as part of the conference itself, and we wanted to create a space where people could feel like they were part of [it],” Moussa said.

“So, we set up the table and we produced different, little elements that could put you in that setting and, at the same time, we wanted to mirror it with a projection of video to set the feel and then to allow people to directly interact with the content, as opposed to having a standard image-based exhibition.”

Also at the opening was the granddaughter of Syria’s Fares al-Khoury, the novelist Colette Khoury. She said the exhibition was long overdue.

“He deserves it,” Khoury said. “All those great figures of the past who have served their country deserve to be honored.”

Angela Jurdak Khoury, the mother of current chairman of the AUB Board of Trustees Philip Khoury, was the only woman among those involved in the drafting of the U.N. Charter.

AUB’s contribution to the Charter is regularly cited at public events in Lebanon and by politicians and pundits in the media, but younger generations aren’t always aware of the details.

“There’s a lot of stuff I did not know,” said Danielle Riachi, an AUB sophomore studying electrical computer engineering. “I didn’t know that Angela Jurdak [Khoury] was involved and that’s really interesting. She helps bring out the feminism that should be in Lebanon.”

For Lynn Farran, an AUB sophomore studying civil engineering, the exhibition honors AUB’s contribution “to such an amazing, historic event back in the 1940s.

“It’s nice to remember those guys and it’s even nicer to feel that they’re a part of this institution.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2013.