المنتدى

The Department of Humanities is the largest in CAS, with over 370 students and 30 full-time faculty members. With its vision of becoming one of the leading departments in the region, the Department of Humanities is committed to achieving academic excellence in teaching and scholarly endeavors, as well as serving the academic community and the public at large. The department currently offers a major in History, and a minor in Geography and Urban Planning for History and Sociology students. In addition, the department offers several elective courses in History, Geography and Philosophy.

In any American university, what the six researchers in this room are doing would be totally unremarkable: launching a new project to use the tools of social science to solve urgent problems in their home countries. But for the young Arab Council for the Social Sciences, this work is anything but routine. The group’s fall meeting, initially planned for Cairo, was canceled at the last minute when Egyptian state security agents demanded a list of participants and research questions. The group relocated its meeting to Beirut, meaning some researchers couldn’t come because of visa problems. Still others feared traveling to Lebanon during a week when the United States was considering air strikes against neighboring Syria. Ultimately, the team met in an out-of-the-way hotel, with one participant joining via Skype.