UA-R-GC-1914-01-01-1972-10-18_Page-061

Just off Cairo's busiest downtown square, swirling with the cacophonous bustle of traffic, lies a cool oasis of calm greenery and unhurried academic life. Behind crenelated arabesque walls the visi­tor finds a college campus with fresh green lawns, tennis courts, benches, and arbored walkways reminiscent of colleges the way they used to be in the United States. This is the American University in Cairo, a little known but extremely influential institution that for the past 50 years has weathered wars, revolutions and mercurial shifts in U. S.-Egyptian relations. Even today, when Washington and Cairo do not maintain formal diplomatic relations, the American University in Cairo, or A.U.C., as it is commonly known, provides a neutral zone in which mutual under­standing can be nourished in intellectual surroundings. Though somewhat old-fashioned by today's American "megaversity" standards, A. U.c. provides a heady educational brew for the young Egyptian students and those from other Arab countries. "We find the university terribly exciting," says Mahmoud Fawzi, an 18-year-old fresh­man. "Especially after traditional schools where we were spoon fed infor­mation, and were only required to repeat it back as if we were com­puters. " The American University today has an undergraduate body of some 1,500 stu­dents- with 450 more enrolled in the graduate program. About 80 percent of the students are Egyptian; the rest come from 68 foreign countries, with some 70 students from the United States. Courses, except for languages, are taught in English. There are about 160 teachers on the faculty, some 45 percent of whom are Egyptian, and an equal proportion Ameri­can. Degrees are given in Arabic studies, economics, political science, English liter­ature, chemistry, physics, materials engi­neering, sociology, anthropology, and Mid­dle East studies. "Our goals," says President Christopher Thoron, "are to offer liberal American education to students of the Middle East and foster understanding of the Arab world in the West. In research, the university undertakes, and encourages others to under· take, studies which benefit the Arab world by advancing the sciences of today and rediscovering the arts of the past. In both teaching and research, the university empha­sizes programs and approaches which complement the activities of the large Egyptian national institutions." The charming campus- with its student. studying beneath palm trees- is close to the vital heart of Cairo, two blocks east 01 the Nile River, and about the same distanc\ from the Egyptian Museum, a reminder that it is an integral part of both Cairo's past and its present. The university opened in 1920 in a palace constructed in the 19th century for a former ..... minister of education, Khairy Pasha. Thtl7 onetime palace now houses administ ye offices and some classrooms. Additio '0 the building completed in 1927 and 1932 house the Arabic Studies Program, th