OH: I’m the assistant dean of law and political science at Beirut Arab University. I’m also the director of the human rights centre at the university.

The PIE: Tell me about this history of Beirut Arab University?

OH: Beirut Arab University was established in 1960. It’s a private, not-for-profit university. In the ‘60s, Lebanon had only two universities: the American University of Beirut and University of St Joseph. One is American; the other is French.

“We were the first university to offer an obligatory university requirement on human rights”

So Beirut Arab University came to respond to the needs of the underprivileged people who cannot afford going to these two prestigious, expensive universities. From the beginning we had a close relationship with Egyptian universities. The relationship went on later to be an academic affiliation with the University of Alexandria, and survived for many years and ended about seven years ago.

The PIE: What role does the Human Rights centre play on campus?

OH: Lebanon is a troubled society, especially since 2005. We were having a lot of internal problems, and the university founded it as a way to counter that. It started with a human rights course – so the university decided, if the problem is tolerance, coexistence, intercultural dialogue and so on, then the best thing to do for our students is to teach them human rights topics.

We were the first university to offer an obligatory university requirement on human rights, meaning you can study engineering or science or law but you will not graduate unless you pass successfully the human rights course.

We also do an annual regional summer course on human rights – so we usually host students from nine Arab countries. We hosted the first training with the Council of Europe on human rights in Arabic in Lebanon; we translated one manual for the Council of Europe and one manual for Johns Hopkins… so the centre has been very active. It’s the first permanent human rights centre in Lebanon at a university, and we cooperate with a large number of local, regional and international organisations.

The PIE: What’s been the feedback from your students?

“Beirut Arab University came to respond to the needs of the underprivileged people who cannot not afford to go to the prestigious, expensive universities”

OH: In the beginning, students weren’t happy. Especially for the applied sciences, it’s way out of their scope of interest. We’ve taught over 12,000 students since 2006, but now this is one of the courses that is most enjoyed, because it takes students out of their everyday disciplines and gives them an insight into new things.

The centre came later, when students asked “‘what’s next?”. It was established in 2009, in order to spread the culture of human rights between our students and through our students to society, so we thought we’d start with our back yard and then let it diffuse.

It gives students a space to think freely, to talk about issues. I think it was needed in Lebanon and we caught this at the right time and offered them something that is really an addition. We’re very proud of the course and of the centre.

The PIE: How many students do you have on campus?

OH: We have approximately 12,000 students. I would say the Lebanese are about 75% of our student body. The situation changed in the Arab countries. In the past they had one or two public universities; now they have a big number, plus the private universities, so the need that we were covering in the past has been covered by other universities, and for that reason only students who would like to have a degree abroad or who want to come and live in Beirut or so on, these are the ones that are coming nowadays.

The PIE: How do you prioritise diversity among your students and staff?

“The agent system of recruitment doesn’t exist here. It’s basically by word of mouth”

OH: From the beginning, our name has a reason. We used to be the university of the Arab countries. Our student body has always been diverse from the beginning, and from our alumni body, which is over 100,000, 70% are non-Arabs. We have a lot of graduates from the Gulf – from Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and the other countries, but these are our main alumni. We have some Western graduates as well, and recently with the Erasmus Mundus programme, which we are a part of, we have exchange students coming from Europe.

The university used to follow the classical annual teaching method, so each programme had a year with exams at the end, then about 10 years ago we shifted to the credit system, and now we are following the American credit system, which gave us a lot of flexibility, allowed us to mobilise faculty in a much easier way. The teaching language is mostly English, apart from some subjects like law and some arts disciplines that are really language related, like Arabic or history.

Currently the student body, as well as the faculty, is diverse. As an example, at the faculty of law we have teachers from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan… and the students are also from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain…

The PIE: How do you recruit students – do you use agents?

OH: No, this system does not exist. The university has some sort of promotional activities, where some we visit some schools. It’s basically by word of mouth. It’s been there since the ‘60s. With the exchange programme it’s the choice of the students abroad and they have their own criteria for choices, but basically it’s one of the well-known universities, so it’s not something we really have to tell them about. We don’t really follow the promotions and advertisements like other universities do, and we have a considerable number of applications every year.

The PIE: Have you seen a change in where students are coming from in the last couple of years?

OH: Not the last couple of years; it’s been going on for a while now. If you look at a country like Jordan, they used to have one main university; that became two, then four, and now you have an endless number of universities. Lebanon itself used to have ten universities; now we have over 40, so the competition is from the inside and the outside.

“We have a considerable number of Iraqi students coming because the Iraqi government is enhancing their specialisations”

The PIE: And are there any particular student markets where you’ve seen an increase?

OH: Well, we have a considerable number of Iraqi graduates in the faculty of law and the faculty of arts. From what I understand, this is because the Iraqi government is enhancing their specialisations, with civil servants furthering their studies. So we have a considerable number of Iraqi students coming because of that. Basically, those are the really visible groups that are coming in. Other than that it’s mainly private initiatives.

The PIE: Are university partnerships part of your strategy?

OH: The university has a number of partnerships. We have a long relationship with Johns Hopkins university, and in the faculty of law we work closely with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in Sweden, we established with them a regional Arab university network including the University of Jordan and the University of Hassan II in Casa Blanca, Morocco.

The PIE: What is the goal of the Arab university network you’ve set up?

OH: Networks are usually either for a certain programme or certain projects. With Johns Hopkins we established together a legal clinic, and carried out a number of projects and conferences on anti-trafficking. We developed as well some programmes with them on social responsibility, anti-trafficking. With the Arab Academic Network, the idea behind the network was to enrich the research on human rights and publications in Arabic.