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Pathbreakers of Arab America—Joesph E. Aoun

posted on: Jan 22, 2025

Photo: Wikipedia

By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer

This is the seventy-first of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, arts, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our seventy-first pathbreaker, Joseph E. Aoun, is a well-known higher education thought leader, renowned linguistics scholar, and the seventh President of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Born to a Lebanese Maronite Christian family, Aoun studied in Beirut, Paris, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has become an internationally respected voice on the value of higher education generally and in the role colleges and universities should play in meeting the challenges and opportunities associated with the transformative effects of artificial intelligence.

An internationally respected voice on the value of higher education, President Aoun has led the global expansion of Northeastern’s signature co-op program, bringing experiential learning opportunities to more than 140 countries

Joseph E. Aoun was born to Maronite Christian parents in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 26, 1953. (Aoun is a common family name in Lebanon; following the French-devised tripartite division of government leadership, the presidency is traditionally assigned to Maronite Christians, including a former president, Michael, and the current president of Lebanon, Joseph, who are unrelated.) He earned a master’s degree in oriental languages and literature at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut in 1975, a Diploma of Advanced Studies in General and Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Paris VIII in 1977, and a PhD in linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. Aoun and his wife Zeina have two sons, Adrian and Joseph Karim.

Aoun was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and a Chevalier in “l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques” by the French government and is a recipient of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a past Chair of the American Council on Education. Most recently, he received the Peter J. Tanous Founder’s Award from the American Task Force on Lebanon for his exceptional educational achievements.

Following his PhD work at MIT in theoretical linguistics under Professor Noam Chomsky, Aoun joined the University of Southern California in 1982 as a Linguistics Professor. While at USC, he served as head of the academic Senate and eventually became a dean. His success in fund-raising led to hiring new professors, creating endowed chairs, and developing two new sub-departments for the study of Armenian and Korean.

Aoun presiding over 2021 graduation — Photo Northeastern

Aoun was then hired by Northeastern University in Boston in 2006 to serve as university president. Showing a practical side to his leadership, he is recognized for one of his first actions under the Board of Trustees, which was to cancel the University’s Huskies football program. The program was 8-26 in its preceding three seasons and faced declining attendance and high costs to remain competitive in recruiting. That move, while controversial, was generally considered positive in retrospect; the funding it freed up allowed for the construction of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, which played more directly to Northeastern’s strengths. Aoun later said he was overwhelmed with calls from other college presidents asking how he managed the feat without enraging alumni.

Another practical aspect of Aoun’s leadership was his 2020 pledge to contribute 20 percent of his annual salary to new funds meant to support students facing economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to support research programs related to the crisis. Each of the university’s senior vice presidents and academic deans also pledged to contribute 10 percent to Northeastern’s “Covid-19 Resilience Fund.” During his tenure, the University has created a global university system spanning 13 campuses across North America and the UK, increased external research funding sevenfold, and hired more than 800 tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Aoun’s idea of higher education for the AI age: “Let’s think about it before the machines do it for us”

Aoun’s “Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” was published and released in 2017 by MIT Press. He proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to “invent, to create, and to discover—to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.” Aoun argues that a “robot-proof” education is not solely concerned with memorizing facts. Instead, it fosters a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society—”a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer.” In his book, Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, ‘humanics,’ which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals.

Promoting Higher Education — Photo Northeastern

As early as the Obama administration, in 2016, the White House issued a report, “The Future of Artificial Intelligence.” Aoun built on that report in his writing, underscoring that “80 percent of AI researchers believe that computers and advanced machines will eventually achieve levels of artificial intelligence that rival human intelligence. Moreover, half believe this will happen by 2040 — just one generation from now.”

In “Robot-Proof,” Aoun avers that leaders and policymakers should anticipate the need for people to become lifelong learners in light of the AI age and work to make federal financial aid more flexible. “No one knows for sure what the artificial intelligence age will look like, but we do know this: It’s coming, and things will change. Whether that change will be a boon or a bane depends largely on individuals’ ability to develop their own intelligence throughout their lifetimes. That, in turn, depends on their ability to access efficient, effective higher education opportunities.”

Sound advice, then, from our seventy-first Pathbreaker: “So let’s start thinking now about how to make it [AI] happen — before the machines start thinking for us.”

Sources:
–“Joseph E. Aoun,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans, 2024
–“Aoun to give 20 percent of salary to student aid and COVID-19 research, Huntington News, 4/21/2020
–“Joseph E. Aoun, Higher education for the AI age: Let’s think about it before the machines do it for us,” Washington D.C., October 27, 2016

John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.

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