Bulletin - American University of Beirut

Students display their pottery prowess
Muraywed and students
Budding potters were treated to a week-long ceramics
exhibition in Saifi Village, organized by AUB’s Department
of Fine Arts and Art History (FAAH).
The event, “Flourishing Talents in Ceramics at AUB,” ran
from May 4 to 10, 2010, at Saifi’s Piece Unique Gallery and
was organized by Amal Muraywed, ceramicist and senior
lecturer at FAAH. She said the display aimed at getting more
people interested in ceramic arts.
Muraywed, who has taught ceramics at AUB for more
than a decade, said the exhibition gave students a chance
to showcase their work to a wider audience.
“The importance of such an event is that the elective
student potters had the opportunity to exhibit their ceramics
in front of their parents, teachers, friends, art critics,
the press, and television interviewers, who were all very
impressed by the work and the display,” she said.
Muraywed has organized annual exhibitions since 2000
and said she hoped their continuation would help promote
the art scene throughout AUB’s campus and alumni, as well
as encouraging students to consider a career in ceramics as
a viable option.
“Teaching the art of clay in all its essential aspects,
such as the history of ceramics, basic techniques, design
and decoration and different firing ways is a rewarding
experience, especially in this part of the world where the
ceramics culture was embedded,” Murayyed said.
Some ceramics pieces from the exhibition were also
displayed at the annual IBDAA biodiversity fair, which took
place on campus on May 21, 2010.
JTP teaches parliamentary staffers media
skills
Sixteen staffers from various Lebanese parliamentary departments,
parties, and blocs sharpened their communications
skills at a workshop conducted by the Journalism
Training Program (JTP) and sponsored by the Westminster
Foundation for Democracy (WFD).
“We’d like other workshops on different topics because
this training was dynamic and more productive than previous
ones we’ve attended,” said Youssef El Hajj, the secretary
of a parliamentary committee.
Participants were immersed in the details of building
bridges with the media, dealing with deadlines, public affairs
priorities, writing news releases, setting up a digital
newsroom, and exploring the role of spokespeople and
media crisis management.
“In a brief period we learned a lot of new theoretical
and practical things, and we corrected some misconceptions
we had,” said Rita Nassour, an assistant to Free Patriotic
Movement MP Ibrahim Kanaan.
Other trainees from the Kataeb Party and Progressive
Socialist Party took turns learning interviewing techniques
and the art of organizing a news conference at the five-day
Saad Hattar shows Rita Nassour how to interview politicians.
mini-course held at Parliament’s library in April.
They were joined by staffers from Parliament’s IT department,
the library, and different administrative offices.
JTP director Magda Abu-Fadil joined forces with trainers
Rouba Kabbara, an Agence France-Presse veteran, and Saad
Hattar, a BBC correspondent dispatched by the Thomson-
Reuters Foundation, which is partnering with WFD for the
workshops in Lebanon.
The trainers also briefed the staffers on media ethics,
planted news stories, conflicts of interest, and their stakeholders’
visual identities.
Continued
The trainees staged mock news conferences, and Hattar
demonstrated the pitfalls of journalists’ tough questions
and ambush interviews.
“It was particularly beneficial to me as I am now more
insistent on transparency and accuracy in the dissemination
JTP promotes media cultural diversity at Rio
UN Alliance of Civilizations
Magda Abu-Fadil (far left) attending forum.
The media need coaching in cultural diversity to develop
sensitivity to differences in race, religion, and ethnic
backgrounds, Journalism Training Program Director Magda
Abu-Fadil told participants at the United Nations Alliance
of Civilizations Forum in Rio de Janeiro.
“We start with simple and easy to remember rules: accuracy,
fairness, balance, and never making assumptions
about people or things,” she said at a roundtable to launch
UNESCO’s World Report, “Investing in Cultural Diversity
and Intercultural Dialogue” (http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=35396&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_
SECTION=201.html), to which she was a contributor.
Abu-Fadil’s recommendations for promoting media
literacy programs were included in a chapter on communication
and cultural contents. UNESCO promoted the world
report at the May forum.
The journalistic rules to which Abu-Fadil referred depend
on a basic element the media often overlook—critical
thinking—which enables humans to discern, respect, and
accept cultural differences.
of news,” said Houtaf Dham, a reporter for Al Bina’ newspaper
and a member of the Syrian Socialist Party, adding
that she hoped the workshop would be held again for other
staffers.
It begins at home, where children pick up cues from
their parents’ behavior towards others; it is reinforced
at school, where some of those behavioral patterns are
manifested; and, increasingly, it has been influenced by the
media that play an all too pervasive role in people’s lives.
“Journalists must have the ability to ask questions and
understand answers in a second language. It’s imperative
that self-respecting journalists be fluent in two or more languages,”
Abu-Fadil said, adding that unless journalists learn
to decipher other people’s languages, cultures, backgrounds,
and problems, they could be misled, or misleading.
UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova invited Abu-
Fadil to be a keynote speaker at the event that grouped
Bokova, André Azoulay, president of the Ana Lindh Euro-
Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures,
University of Chicago Professor Manuela Carneiro de Cunha,
Benin’s envoy to UNESCO Olabiyi Balalola Joesph Yai, and
Prof. Homi Bhabha, head of Harvard University’s Humanist
Center.
The roundtable was one of several activities during
the Alliance of Civilizations Forum featuring Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-Moon, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, UNESCO
Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education and Qatari
First Lady, Sheikh Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, Arab
League Secretary General Amr Moussa, Saudi Foreign
Minister Saud Al Faisal, Argentinian President Cristina
Fernandez de Kirshner and Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Spring Poetry Festival blames materialism for
poetry’s predicament
Poetry today is in a state of crisis, as the quest for material
gain has overshadowed appreciation of nature, said Tarek
Nasereddine, vice president of the Lebanese Writers’ Union,
during a poetry festival held on campus on May 17, 2010.
“What is needed today is not just a campaign for
cleanliness. . . but also a campaign to cleanse our souls
and become more attuned to our surroundings,” said
Nasereddine.
The Lebanese Heritage Club at AUB organized the
poetry festival in collaboration with the Lebanese Writers
Union, which honored six AUB students who had won the
Literary Competition initiated by the union. The themes of
Continued
20 AUB Bulletin June 2010 AUB Bulletin June 2010 21