A cultural, not a political lobby the mixed legacy of a grand plan.

• Author: Talhami, Ghada Hashem
• Position: Association of Arab-American University Graduates - Organization overview - Essay

ONE OF THE MAJOR DIFFICULTIES of reflecting upon and assessing a collective experience is to find the appropriate voice. To whom, or for whom, does one write? The membership which shaped and built an organization, or the external community which stood as the observers and evaluators of such an effort? In the case of AAUG, the task looms larger than in any effort preceding it simply because the membership, the founders, and the organizers of this group aimed at no less than the political and cultural mobilization of the external community. To complicate matters further, the external community itself lacked homogeneity or a common historical experience since it consisted of Arab-Americans, with all their varied countries of origin and levels of assimilation, as well as, the Arab World at large, with all of its multiple degrees of politicization, ideological commitment, and international awareness. But even if all of these variables were disentangled, it would still be difficult to adopt the appropriate voice since the ultimate choice lies between emphasizing what this distinguished organization set out to accomplish, and the reality of what it failed to achieve. In other words, any reflection on the history, development, and past stature of AAUG must contend with the fact that in the year 2006, the organization has already been dormant for a number of years. The most appropriate voice for this task, then, is to measure the achievement by the grandeur of the design as any outside critic would do, and in the process, recognize that history compels us to be absolutely candid. In the end, what should engage us here is the writing of one aspect of the organized life of the Arab-American community in the second half of the twentieth century. What this critic hopes to bring to this discussion is an analysis of the organization's standing in the communal life and history of the Arab-American immigrants. Within this framework, she would attempt an assessment of the organization's impact on the intellectual direction of the Arab World at large during the same period of time. Both pursuits, it should be noted, can only be successful if the perspective was that of an internal participant, but the analysis that of a detached academic observer.

THE MISSION DEFINED

Judging by the booklet titled "The First Decade, 1967-1977" AAUG had a split personality right from its inception. Although we were not aware of this in the 1970s and 1980s, clearly a subtle state of tension existed between the American-directed and the Arab-directed foci of the association. The tension was there to see if one cared to read between the lines and perform an adequate degree of deconstruction of the earliest documents produced by AAUG. This was forthrightly expressed by Michael Suleiman, the association's president in 1977, who later on emerged as the foremost expert on the historical experience of the early Arab-American immigrants. He wanted it to be known that the association was "generally recognized (by supporters and opponents alike) as the most effective Arab-American organization on the national scene today." But few lines before that, he also asserted that the association "has indeed lived up to its commitment to provide accurate scientific, cultural and educational information about the Arab World, develop a creative atmosphere for mutual respect and understanding between the Arab and American peoples and assist in the development of the Arab World."

Going back further to the second year of the Association's existence, we see the same dual trajectory expressed clearly in the definition of goals as stated by a slate of officers headed by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Again, the stated plan aimed at increasing intellectual and academic output and activity on the Middle East, as well as, preparing adequate means of responding to discriminatory treatment of Arab-Americans here in the U.S. But it was also understood that a common thread ran through these two halves of the Arab-American experience which could only be understood by dissecting the legacy of colonialism and Zionism and what these two bequeathed to the Arab World. This was seen as the arrested development of the "Arab Awakening", which brought forth not emancipation and progress as was hoped for, but "sectarianism, familism and village chauvinism." These characteristics defined the life experiences of the early Arab immigrants to this country who continued to foster such particularistic identities among their descendants until their Arab identity suffered near-obliteration. AAUG adroitly linked these deficiencies together and set out to foster a generation of Arab-Americans who, though professionally successful and culturally assimilated, strongly adhered to the cultural and linguistic unity of the Arabs. This dual mission, hence, was expressed as reaching and reshaping Arab-Americans by strengthening their ties to the Arab World. The association, thus, was more than just an academic organization representing American academics of Arab background. This may have been our exterior image, but for those who were deeply committed to the revival and ultimate unity of the Arab World, the task was more arduous and multi-faceted.

Today, this feature of the association's declared agenda may seem ingenuous, especially since the growth and maturation of other organizations. Representing the Arab immigrant community in succeeding years forced us to pursue similar unifying goals. Yet the fact remains that what set AAUG apart from all other organizations was the fact that the association went about realizing its dual mission intellectually and academically. We were indeed faced with a problem, namely the dichotomous relationship between a very important segment of the Arab people who were rapidly assimilating to this country and its culture, and the Arab nation at large which continued to suffer from political and cultural Western and Zionist hegemonic policies. AAUG was indeed engaged in molding the modern Arab as someone both at home in the Western environment while at the same time intellectually engaged in the political issues and intellectual dilemmas of the emerging Arab World. The association, therefore, rejected the notion of becoming an organized political lobby, and made its first priority educating the American public in the essential causes of Arab decline and ways and means of addressing them. The assumption was that in time, a politically-aware Arab-American generation would better succeed in re-defining the relationship of America to the Arab world, hence the heavy emphasis on studying and emphasizing the issues of development and modernity in that part of the universe. Indeed, what we struggled to accomplish was the creation of a legitimate voice capable of presenting issues of the Arab World empathetically, not negatively, as was customary in the American academy. This author came face to face with the intolerance of certain segments of the American academic community in a review of one of her books on Palestine and the Egyptian national identity. The reviewer, an American-Jewish academic and activist of Egyptian background, mocked the central theme of my work as being too symptomatic of the work of those Arab-Americans (reference to AAUG) who naively believe that the Palestine issue was central to all Arab political crises, especially those concerned with the national identity. A forthcoming book dealing with the impact of the Palestine issue on the Egyptian media and which was researched on site, will undoubtedly be met with the same ridicule towards AAUG and the Arabness of its founding generation.

It would be appropriate here to ask how justifiable was this emphasis on the unity of the Arab World and its migrant communities? What did AAUG accomplish in this regard? We find that the American Jewish community also struggled with these issues of...