BEIRUT: Ten years after his assassination, Rafik Hariri’s legacy lives on through the raft of university scholarships provided by the late premier’s foundation – some recipients say they owe Hariri their careers, others assert that he saved their lives.
“The scholarship rescued me. If it wasn’t for that I would have ended up on the streets in a [Civil War] militia,” Dr. Zahi Ramadan, operations director of higher education at SABIS Educational Services, told The Daily Star.
Ramadan, who received a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Marquette in 1997, said his “father couldn’t pay for an education in Lebanon, let alone a [doctorate] in the U.S.”
Living the Civil War first-hand in south Lebanon, Ramadan said Hariri’s philanthropy pulled him out of a country in the grips of death, and changed the trajectory of his family’s future.
“Not only did the scholarship change my life, it changed my children’s lives and their children’s lives. Today, my kids are able to get a top-notch education and the cycle of illiteracy and poverty has been broken, all because of this token of generosity,” he said.
Ramadan is one of over 36,000 university students who received university scholarships from the Hariri Foundation. According to the foundation’s records, 853 scholarships were issued for doctoral degrees, 1,829 scholarships were issued for postgraduate master’s degrees, and more than 24,000 were given to undergraduate BA and BS students.
The scholarship program, which was launched in 1983 and ran through 2012, provided financial support either in part or in full for students’ tuitions, housing, transportation and books.
In addition to monetary assistance, the foundation also offered career guidance and counseling, helping generations of young Lebanese.
“Without the scholarship I would not have gone to university – with it I became an acting dean,” Salim Chahine, acting dean at AUB’s Olayan School of Business, told The Daily Star. “Hariri gave me a window into the world. Today I am publishing in its top outlets.”
Scholarships from the Hariri Foundation funded his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies in France. Chahine, who studied finance, said he keeps teaching as a way of “giving back” what he himself was given by the grants – the opportunity “to motivate individuals and to prepare elite [students] for the future of my country.”
Director-General of the Hariri Foundation Salwa Baassiri, sitting beneath a portrait of the late former prime minister in her Beirut office, recalled Hariri’s drive to invest in human capital and cultivate a significant number of educated elites.
“Hariri used to always say, ‘In order to build a nation you need to build a new generation, and to build a capable new generation, you need education,’” she said.
Baassiri recalled the case of one student whose father used to work as a street vendor selling coffee.
The director general says the foundation allowed even the poorest students to partake in the “dream” of receiving an education.
“At that time Hariri was inspiring everybody. It was like a dream – everyone would come knocking on your door asking to share it,” Baassiri said.
“Today, some of them work in the most reputable universities, when at a young age they didn’t believe they would even make it to college.”
Though the scholarships primarily targeted students who did not have the monetary means to even consider university studies, assistance was sometimes given to students who were financially comfortable.
According to Baassiri, in “rare” cases students who were relatively well off were provided with scholarships to cover the expensive tuitions of highly reputable Ivy League universities in the U.S., as their families could not afford the fees themselves. The funding ensured that Lebanese pupils could access top centers of study.
“You can’t have leaders if they don’t go to the best places in the world,” Baassiri said.
Lawyer, professor and former presidential candidate Chibli Mallat is a testament to Hariri’s investment in such students.
“His [support] has taken me from London, to Harvard Law School, and on to Yale Law School. I hope I have carried the spirit of Hariri’s leadership throughout these successes,” Mallat told The Daily Star.
Mallat’s gratitude to the late premier is inscribed in his first book, 1993’s “The Renewal of Islamic Law,” which won the prestigious Albert Hourani prize for best academic book of the year.
Mallat deems Hariri’s assassination to be the “ultimate sacrifice.”
The former prime minister was murdered on Feb. 14, 2005, in a massive bombing in Beirut.
His death precipitated the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after a presence of nearly 30 years.
“This was the closest thing to a Ghandi moment in the Middle East,” Mallat said.
According to Baassiri, Hariri’s scholarships were about more than just philanthropy; an entire strategy underlay his charitable actions – the late premier did not want to restrict the scope of his investment to the economic sphere, as economic growth did not necessarily entail the distribution of wealth.
“But development is a little different because you can ensure that everyone will receive a share,” she added. “This is where education comes in.”
Hariri believed that the necessary change would only follow the emergence of a “critical mass” of educated people, Baassiri said. “This is why he invested in so many.”
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