Acceptance Remarks, Distinguished Alumni Award, Wayne State University

It is an honour to receive this Distinguished Alumni Award. I would like to thank Mary Ann Tyler-Allen, President of the Wayne State University Alumni Association and Robert Thomas, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for this honour.

I would also like to congratulate the other award winners.

It is great to be back here at Wayne State University after 34 years. I remember my days here, having experienced a mixture of exhilaration and of a sense of exploration.

As a graduate student on a scholarship from Saudi Arabia, I was fascinated by the events and characters surrounding me. I belonged to the generation of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the generation of the Viet Nam War and of the Detroit Riots of July 1967.

The memory that comes to mind often is that six chaotic days during July 1967, when 43 people died amid gunfire and looting, with whole sections of Detroit being up in flames, which became known as the Detroit Riots.

I remember how worried I was about my Ph.D. Adviser, Dr. Emile Newcomb, whom I respected and cherished deeply and who lived a few blocks from the university. When I asked her what she did, she smiled and said, I cooked and cleaned the house. I did not understand then that cooking and cleaning could be a coping mechanism, but I certainly understood it better when I lived through a complex war in Lebanon from 1974 to 1982.

I believe that my experience here at Wayne State equipped me to understand both of my worlds and prepared me for the global job I hold now. I had come from Mills College in Oakland, California, where I had lived on a beautiful campus, full of eucalyptus trees, with a creek, small winding roads, a faculty village and a small chapel.

Here at Wayne State, I entered a new environment and became totally exposed to a much larger and dynamic society.

I discovered the Black Panther movement and met its leader, Stokely Carmichael. I remember him saying that, for black people, language was an essential part of their identity and a form of silent resistance to becoming integrated. This anecdote acquired a deeper meaning when, as Teaching Assistant, I taught English to disadvantaged students joining Wayne State from the Detroit area. I remember the programme coordinator telling us NOT to correct the spoken language of the African-American students, but to focus on the written text. It was then that I understood what Stokely Carmichael had meant. I discovered in practical terms the link between language, culture, literature and identity.

I studied Cultural Anthropology and English Literature, and the campus and the city were my laboratory. From the students to the professors…from the black nationalists to the activists of the Arab Student Organization…from the white people moving out to the suburbs, to the wonderful Jordanian and Palestinian community that embraced me and the Yemeni workers in the car industry for whom I interpreted in courts…it was a time of change and transformation. It was the time of “I have a dream” and “we shall overcome”.

Values were shifting and the fault lines and cracks in society were being exposed and expanded. This was happening here in the United States and across the world. My world back home was also in upheaval. These were the years after the 1967 six-day Arab–Israeli war. It marked the beginning of the downward spiral in which we now find ourselves—fragmented, occupied in part and without a sense of direction.

As a student, I was in the midst of both upheavals, trying to understand them, to see across cultures and to link them where possible.

As I lived both experiences, I found a great deal of comfort in the struggle against racism and xenophobia; against us Arabs and especially Palestinians. The various means that were used—from marches to sit-ins to the signing of petitions—left a deep impression on me.

The struggle to be free of discrimination—to be able to enjoy the same rights, opportunities and privileges as others—is a struggle that continues to be fought by individuals and groups around the world. For me, the struggle finally found its expression in my commitment to human rights.

I believe the fight for women’s rights, for equal opportunity and equal treatment before the law, for an end to violence and discrimination against women, is one of the most important social movements of our time.

The United Nations agency I head, the United Nations Population Fund, is working in about 150 countries to promote the human rights of women and young people within broader society. And one of the main lessons I learned from my days here at Wayne State University, in studying English and researching on stereotyping, the subject of my Ph.D. thesis, is that change can only come from within. I have incorporated this understanding into our work in a programme called Culture, Gender and Human Rights.

As I look back at my years here at Wayne State University, I confirm that the education I received here, both within and outside the classroom, prepared me contribute to an increasingly advanced and interconnected global society. And for that, I will always be grateful to Wayne State University and to Detroit.

Thank you.