CAIRO: “I’m proud and honored, said Lisa Anderson, in an interview with Daily News Egypt, on her new position as provost of the American University in Cairo.
Taking over from Tim Sullivan who had occupied the position since 1998, Anderson’s arrival in Cairo is only the latest stop in a long and distinguished career in Middle East studies.
Her interest in the region was first piqued as an undergraduate when a professor assigned her a paper on Egypt. She has never looked back since. Upon graduation, she received an MA from Tufts, and then her PhD from Columbia and it was during this period that she received her first taste of Egypt, as a student at the American University’s Center for Advanced Arabic Study Abroad.
As a pure scholar, the new Chancellor stands at the top of her field and is noted for her expertise on North African politics, which was the topic of her first book, “The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1960. However, she asks her Egyptian colleagues to bear with her, as my Tunisian Colloquial is not very useful in Egypt.
In addition to publishing dozens of other scholarly works, including a 2003 book on Social Science and Public Policy, Anderson served as President of the prestigious Middle Eastern Studies Association.
But if Anderson has a distinguished record as a scholar, perhaps her biggest forte is in academic management. Here she might be described as a visionary.
In response to a question about American professors of Middle Eastern studies using blogging to become better known than they might have otherwise, Anderson put the trend in the larger context of the effect new information technology is having on higher education.
She compared it to the effect the introduction of television had on American professional sports teams in the 1950s. Before this period, the “team was the main attraction and its players were paid very little. But with the television at the greater exposure it offered, individual players, such as Michael Jordan could become superstars, and they and not the team, became the main attraction.
“Just as television fundamentally changed the relationship between athlete and team, the internet is changing the relationship between professors and university, as the prominence of some of these bloggers indicates. Understanding and using these trends to our advantage is critical to the role of an educator, she explains.
“I am fascinated with the character of higher education and how it links into changes in the wider world. I spent ten years running a school of International and Public Affairs which was devoted to this question, but in a global and not a US sense.
Taking over at AUC will give Anderson a chance to tackle this challenge in her region of expertise.
“I remain devoted to the region and want to help this institute ask these types of questions, and to create leaders of this country and region who are in tune with this wider.
The AUC new campus is perfect for implementing this, she explains.
“Take an institution such as AUC and look at what our new campus will permit us to do in a global system. We have everything that is interesting: a location that is at a regional crossroads, a deep enough history and built-up faculty and now we have this unbelievable campus.
She notes enhancement of the school’s education programs as one area where AUC “can make a real contribution to the region.
But did Anderson worry that the campus’s remote location might negate some of its benefits?
“It will require us to be more self-conscious about what it means to be in Cairo. We will have to be more disciplined about taking advantage of these great resources, workshops and internships, which may have been taken for granted at our old location.
While Anderson expects a drop in study abroad enrollment for a one or two year period, the numbers will eventually return “as our new location with its superior facilities will bring a much more congenial learning environment.
Some faculty and students at AUC have complained about the rocky transition to the new location which still more closely resembles a construction site than a college campus. Some departments were forced to cancel class for the first two weeks because their classrooms were not ready.
“The transition has been something of a disappointment, she admits and understands why students and faculty are “disconcerted that they did not hit the ground running.
However, the university expected that this would not have been the case.
“The expectation with the contractor was that everything would be completely ready to go at the beginning of the semester. If you came to the campus last May it seemed like we were moving forward at that pace. But the contractor swooned and didn’t keep up the same pace, she added.
