Dr. Abdul Aziz Said: Fifty Years of Inspiration
By Sally Acharya
(From American Weekly, Oct. 17, 2006)

Abdul Aziz Said '54, '55, '57 was once asked by a student what he liked about teaching. “I'm a kid professor, ”he said, “and I like to be with kids.”

That was 50 years ago, when the Syrian scholar was one of the newest professors on campus. Only three years earlier, he had been an AU undergraduate himself. He began teaching just before ground was broken for the newly formed School of International Service (SIS). Fifty years later, SIS is internationally known, and Said is AU's longest-serving professor.

“He's been a constant source of innovation and inspiration to others throughout the time he's been here,” says SIS dean Louis Goodman. “He's made a big impression on students, and inspired them to think about the world.”

In the early years, the very presence of a professor from the Arab world was eye-opening. “Professor Said was exotic,” recalled Mark Hambley '69, who became an ambassador in the Middle East, in a tribute 10 years ago. “Appearing daily in his double-breasted suits, his wavy hair and large mustache made him a dashing figure who appeared to many of us to be a cross between the actor Omar Sharif and the poet Khalil Ghibran.”

But it was his emphasis on the values of peace that made the deepest impact. Over the course of half a century, Said founded the program in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, founded and directed the Center for Global Peace, lectured around the world, consulted with major international agencies, and wrote a long stream of books and articles.

In 1996, the mayor of the Saudi city of Jeddah, whose son was among Said's students, endowed the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, whose first occupant is Said. “Professor Said has literally created a new area of academic focus which involves the study and analysis of Islamic concepts of peace, conflict resolution, human rights, and good governance within their own context,” notes Carole O'Leary, an Iraq expert at the Center for Global Peace.

Conflict was something he knew all too well from his earliest years; it was the reason his father had vanished. On the wall of Said’s expansive, Oriental rug-filled office is a sketch of a debonair man in a swallowtail coat, the picture of 1930s elegance. It's his father, a leader in a nationalist uprising against French rule in Syria, who was forced to leave his family and go into exile. more>>