James Beshai Oral History

James A. Beshai was an undergraduate student at the American University in Cairo, a 1947 alumnus who later taught at the university in the 1950s. A Coptic Christian from Luxor, Beshai majored in Social Science and studied psychology, and speaks about his professors and President John Badeau, Dean Worth Howard’s drama program, and students’ English language abilities. He offers a portrait of the small, multi-ethnic student body, discussing the interaction between Muslims and Christians and male and female students. Sports at AUC is covered, including how student athletes and especially female co-eds drew onlookers through the campus fence and prompted criticism of the university, which was defended by alumni newspaper journalists. Beshai comments on AUC’s “country club” academic reputation but the respect it elicited as an American school, discussing the missionary orientation of its faculty but its openness to interreligious cooperation. He recounts university life during the Second World War, including his own work grading exams for the United States Armed Forces Institute that offered classes to American soldiers, as well as student opinion. Politics did not engage the AUC community, he states, until after the US recognition of Israel in 1947, influenced by the large number of Palestinian students. Beshai recalls prominent speakers (including a Nobel Prize Winner) and musical performers at Ewart Hall, and prominent classmates. After graduation Beshai went to the US and studied at Crozer theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he became friends with classmate Martin Luther King, Jr.. Beshai returned to Egypt in the latter 1950s to teach psychology at AUC, and gave King a tour of the campus on a stop in Cairo after his 1959 trip to India. After receiving a doctorate in the US Beshai pursued a career teaching university psychology and working at U.S. Veteran’s Administration hospitals