AUB President Fadlo Khuri Bizarrely Quotes Lana Del Rey In Email To Students

In his monthly “President’s Perspective” email, AUB’s much talked about president wrapped up his feedback on the student government elections by quoting American singer Lana Del Rey’s “Hope is a Dangerous Thing For a Woman Like Me to Have”.

Khuri believed that the song’s lyrics resonate with “the beleaguered nation-state our university calls home,” choosing the following verse to emphasize his point:

“They write that I’m happy, they know that I’m not
But, at best, you can see I’m not sad
But hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
But I have it
Yeah, I have it
Yeah, I have it
I have”

why is fadlo khuri quoting lana del rey????? pic.twitter.com/Bzxktm4U9U

— Ahmad Sabra (@ahmadssabra) October 31, 2022

These lyrics come at the end of an email titled “The Republic of Hope,” referring to the university’s student elections and Lizzy Grant’s lyrics. Khuri believes that the “‘Republic of the AUB student body,’ tiny as it is in number…is seen by many as auguring national, regional, and even super regional trends.”

The email is a perfect encapsulation of the disconnect at the top of Lebanon’s premier university. The election process, which saw the participation of only 3,625 students (51% of those eligible), elected 20 members to the university’s highest student body, the USFC (University Student Faculty Committee). According to initial reports, 11 of the USFCs came from the Change Starts Here campaign, 5 from the Secular Club, and 4 from the remnants of the March 8 movement.

Khuri praises Change Starts Here and the Secular Club for being “two independent parties” that garnered the most seats. Away from debates on their politics and the vagueness of their independent opposition, those 16 seats are stifled in a completely powerless student body that has failed to prevent moves such as AUB’s total dollarisation last Spring. Believing that this is a sign of hope is at best delusional and at worst extremely cynical.

Maybe quoting Lana Del Rey is an improvement on the usual pretentiousness of Charles Dickens, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles, but that does not change the fact that this university’s administration is the reason many students believe hope is a dangerous thing for them to have.