Ibn Khaldun Award Acceptance Speech

May 26, 2007

Athens, GA

 Welcome 

Ambassador Hachana, Mayor Davison, family, friends and colleagues, thank you all for being here.  It’s a big honor for me, for our University and our town.   

I bring you greetings and a warm welcome from our Provost, Dr. Arnett Mace who was planning to be here with us tonight, but couldn’t due to a personal obligation.   

Award acceptance and acknowledgements

I am truly honored to accept the Ibn Khaldoun Award, and I accept this award on behalf of so many.  My family: my husband and my son, and my parents and siblings. I wish they could have been here.

I accept it on behalf of everyone from the US and Tunisia who contributed to our partnership program and where we are today.  It would take the entire evening to mention everyone by name. I couldn’t be more grateful to the UGA leadership, at all levels for supporting me and my work: the Tunisian government and Tunisian universities, all professors and administrators, staff and students from both sides. The State Department, particularly MEPI. My assistants past and present.  Embassies and ambassadors from countries, the city of Athens, its Mayor and its people.

Those involved in any way in partnership please stand up to be recognized.

Partnerships

In our very complex world today, peace and prosperity are going to very much depend on our capacity to work together and our ability to overcome cultural differences and obstacles.  Partnerships such as ours and educational and professional exchanges are essential in this regard.  They help open minds and broaden horizons. I’m fortunate to belong to two countries that are into opening minds and to work for a university that is eager to facilitate that.  

Uprooting

When I left Tunisia at a young age more than 22 years ago to study engineering at Georgia Tech, nothing could have prepared me for the sense of loss that one and their family have to live with and endure for the rest of their lives as a result of leaving. (A great scholar and writer called it an ambiguous loss that’s always in the background and doesn’t resolve itself.)  Many of you in this room know how being uprooted changes the entire context of your life. It can be challenging at so many levels, particularly the spiritual level.  It can be fragmenting.  

One of the most revealing moments for me was when I started to reflect on my life and began to understand some of the effects of living with fragments of myself across continents.  One of the most liberating and healing moments was when I started to accept some of these effects, and discovered that they can be neutralized by taking advantage of unique opportunities inherent in my belonging to two worlds. 

Our partnership program with Tunisia has been one such opportunity and it has helped me gather the pieces and find a sense of belonging and community again, a bigger community than the one I started out with in Tunisia or the one I found myself in Georgia, a community that unites them both. 

Community

All of you are here tonight because you realize the importance of community, of reaching out to each other, of building bridges.  So many of you have traveled from all over the country to be here tonight, I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

All who traveled to Athens from elsewhere please stand up.

I’d like to take this opportunity to commend Ali Khemili for his remarkable vision to conceive of the TCC and for his leadership and innovation in running this organization and I’d like to thank all board members for their perseverance and hard work, and the local chapter for organizing this event. 

This organization, this annual event, this award are a powerful way to build our community and make our lives fuller. 

Award reflection

It’s a big honor for anything to be uttered in the same sentence with Ibn Khaldun’s name.  But for the center to name its award after Ibn Khaldun and for all those who receive the award, it’s not only a supreme honor but it’s also a big responsibility. 

Ibn Khaldoun, this great Tunisian scholar, thinker, philosopher, historian, and sociologist lived during a time that’s not much different from ours today.  He witnessed the beginning of the decline of Arab civilization and Andalucia, he lived in a world full of conflict and turmoil. Yet, he didn’t surrender to it. On the contrary, it fueled his interest in civilization, and history, and community, and the intellectual legacy he left behind him is one of the most powerful and profound produced by mankind. 

The responsibility we all have towards Ibn Khaldun’s legacy, and towards ourselves and our children, is to contribute, each in our own way, to a stronger healthier local and global community by reaching out to each other and building the necessary bridges to get us all on the same side. 

Thank you.