The White Man at AUB

I have told the story before: when I was undergraduate at AUB, I once woke up really angry at the institution. So I made signs in Arabic calligraphy and I wrote (in Arabic): The solution, the Solution: Nationalize the University." I put them all over campus. Some of you may remember them. I always thought of it as a colonialist outpost in our lands. Following my posts about Professor Lee, a professor at AUB (who does not want to be identified) sent me this today: "Your latest reply to White Man Lee is so to the point and truthful, the bottom line is that there is no freedom of expression at AUB, many of us wanted to reply to the white man's stupid emails but refrained of doing so, "there is a contract to sign and you don't want to upset the Americans!!!" as someone put it. I remember a few years ago, during the days of Waterbury as president of AUB, how he wanted to fire a janitor having heard that he kicked a cat on campus! We heard that he was furious until one of his VP (Georges Tohme as I was told) explained to him that in our culture, it is uncommon for people to hit or torture cats. A week after the incident, a Chairman of a Dept. at AUB was phone called at his home by campus security informing him that there is a cat stuck in one of the classrooms. The Chair was angry about the silly issue and that it doesn't deserve the call and the disturbance. After he hung up, he remembered Waterbury and cat story, he rushed out to the Department to save the cat... and his job, he thought. This is so funny, so sad, so meaningful, ?so AUB?."