Night School in Beirut and the Public Sphere: Student Civic Action Rooted in Liberal Secularism

Abstract

Critics define public sphere as sites where individuals deliberate on issues of civic importance, intervene to promote the common good, and assert authority that serves as a check on the state’s power. Universities in the West and Middle East have promoted healthy public spheres by engaging students in service learning and volunteerism and teaching the civic literacy skills necessary to take part in activism and advocacy. Western contexts often assume a secular public sphere, but scholars in the Arab world debate whether “public” identities rooted in religious affiliation constrict the health of the public sphere or foster identity and engagement. Using rhetorical–ethnographic methods, the present study examines a community literacy initiative in Beirut wherein undergraduates embodied a liberal-secular spirit and asserted a particular model of public-sphere activism that reflected that spirit. I pay special attention to the language the undergraduates used to articulate civic values and ideals. Themes that emerged include the undergraduates’ sophisticated understanding of and experience with civic work and their resistance to perceived institutional and dominant cultural values such as sectarianism.

Conclusion

NS, though no panacea, offers a strong corrective to the problematic scenario ­described by critics like Ayish (2008) who suggest a weakness in the Arab public sphere. The NS effort embodies a “do-it-yourself” ethos, without official sanction. The problem, of course, is that this also means a lack of resources. The NS program created a kind of “public space” on the university ’s campus, a public space where individuals of different religions and social classes interacted. The undergraduates built this space with little material support from the university and, indeed, operated under an ideological position that in some ways went against the dominant (i.e., sectarian) model. Khalaf (2006) has crafted an especially compelling historical and cultural study of the Bourj, Beirut’s central public square (the area of Beirut’s city center that houses both Martyr ’s Square and the memorial to ­assassinated Prime Minister Hariri). Khalaf sees the site as multivalent but ultimately finds much cause for optimism in the square’s use as a public place of organizing, particularly in the weeks following Hariri’s assassination in 2005 . For Khalaf, the Bourj represents Lebanon’s diversity, its potential for “collective mobilization” (p. 15), its “emergent composite identity” (p. 244). The NS program, a small, little discussed (even on campus) operation, obviously lacks the visibility of the Bourj but, similarly, the program illustrates the cosmopolitan potential of civic action . If NS was a “public space,” it was also a playful public space. Informants were able to play and imagine something different for themselves and for their society.

The CWL embraced—at least during the 2010–2011 academic year—the ­secularist ideology that many young, liberal Lebanese espouse. The ideology is somewhat countercultural in that Lebanese society is heavily invested in sectarianism by virtue of its confessional system and the influence of sectarian politics is even felt at the level of higher education, where student organizations enjoy sponsorship from political parties. The CWL’s mission statement articulates this support of secularism explicitly: “[T]hrough certain activities ranging from lectures to fun events, we look forward to promoting our idea of a civil society by endorsing secularist concepts such as civil marriage and non-sectarian interaction within society.” The rhetoric is assertive, explicit, and proactive, sounding almost as if the mission is addressing the society write large. In short, it sounds like a manifesto. If the club’s mission statement is its manifesto, then its NS operation puts the manifesto into action.

This theory-informed action does indeed reject particular institutional and dominant cultural ideas. As stated previously, the sectarian identity of student organization on campus can be quite intense, which further illustrates the CWL’s proverbial against-the-grain ethos. For example, on student government election day, the university increases security and restricts visitors due to large campus rallies sponsored by national (and beyond) political parties who are endorsing particular candidates. Rarely do independent candidates (those lacking the support and affiliation from a national political party) win student elections there. This is the type of tendency against which the CWL pushes.

A healthy public sphere depends upon the active engagement of community members working together to support the common good. Higher education ­institutions in both Western and Middle Eastern contexts can promote a robust and engaged society by making a variety of public-sphere activities available to students. The present study suggests those activities can fruitfully include volunteer activities, especially those that allow students to organize, take on leadership roles, contextualize the volunteer work within broader societal contexts, and make sense of the world through independent critical thinking instead of partisan political ideology. Further, the data support the notion that interaction among diverse members of society (e.g., those from different socioeconomic strata and different ethnoreligious affiliations) fosters a critical, metacognitive understanding of how a society functions. When the various agents who interact in public-sphere activities come from diverse backgrounds, there is the added potential for intercultural understanding and reduced sectarianism and divisiveness as well—a desirable outcome in both Western and Arab contexts, to be sure.