“The Star of David and the Cedar Tree: Arab-Jewish Relations at the American University of Beirut (1900-1950)” | Caroline Kahlenberg

The American University of Beirut (AUB) has long served as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity. Throughout the twentieth century, scores of Middle Eastern politicians and intellectuals graduated from its halls. This lecture explores AUB’s little-known history of Jewish-Arab relations. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Jews formed around ten percent of the university’s student body, including a small but vocal group of Zionist students. By examining dynamic Zionist-Arab encounters beyond the borders of British-Mandate Palestine (1917-1948)—which included daily student interactions, institutional collaborations, and conflict in the leadup to the 1948 War—this lecture traces a history of campus cooperations and frictions that has important resonances today.

Caroline Kahlenberg is Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures and  Israel Institute Faculty Fellow at the Jewish Studies Program in the University of Virginia