Recalling Clovis: A Young Arab American's View

posted on: May 16, 2016

BY: Will Youmans/Contributing Writer

Anyone fortunate enough to see Ambassador Clovis Maksoud at one of his frequent speaking engagements the last ten years or so would have witnessed the delightful scene of the frail, short, elderly man making his way slowly to the podium.  With his heavy bespectacled eyes, his head would bounce between glances at the ground, to avoid chairs and other obstacles, and his destination, the podium, where the one who introduced him waited patiently.

To those unfamiliar with the Ambassador, it would have been easy to pre-judge the forthcoming talk as equally slow, cumbersome and probably old-fashioned.

They would have been very surprised.

As soon as he got to the speaker’s position, he instantly energized. It was as if the podium held a secret power source and all he had to do was plug in.

Not only did his voice elevate to many times greater than one would foresee, but the passion he exuded surprised and then captured audiences. Still, he managed this without being bombastic or simply appealing to raw emotions. As driven as he was to move the crowd, he weaved in analysis, facts, humor and telling vignettes.

He managed to blend the keen insights of a seasoned political observer and the fiery care of a young activist.  His talks were equally thoughtful, nuanced and provoking.

Being simultaneously pragmatic and idealistic may seem improbable, but he was, after all, a man who wore so many competing hats.

He was trained as a lawyer — at George Washington University, where I work — yet was a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs and published numerous papers on regional affairs.

Later, he represented the Arab League to India, the United States and the United Nations — the last post of which he resigned to protest the 1991 Gulf War — making him an activist diplomat.  A one-time insider who was never too inside to lose sight of the larger world he wanted to see come into fruition.

Many times, he spoke proudly of serving as the League’s representative to India during Jawaharlal Nehru’s waning years as the country’s first prime minister.  The Ambassador was a devout Arab nationalist and in deep solidarity with other post-colonial movements in the Global South.  He personified that linkage in his post.

It was a commitment to larger principles that made him one who defied categories. He was not Palestinian — he was born to a Lebanese Maronite family — but was sincerely committed to the Palestinian cause.  As a pan-Arab disciple, he was outraged by the destruction of Iraq and deeply opposed to the fractiousness of Arab politics.  He demanded better of Arab governments and condemned small-minded divisiveness and petty interests that kept the whole so much weaker.

For him, building Arab institutions were the remedy to the region’s epidemic of personality cult leadership.  One way in which he dissented from the prevailing order, as odd as it may sound,  was through rational institutionalism.  I always sensed he was more about procedural justice than any ideological doctrine.

When I heard the news that he passed away this last weekend, I was both saddened by the loss of the man, but also for what his departure represented.  He embodied the aspirations for something greater, including a sensibility of Arab solidity with empowerment for its constituent communities.

Ambassador Maksoud’s death is for me a stark reminder that the grand notions he stood for had become quite like the ambitious institution he once represented, the Arab League: decrepit, exploited by the cynical and terminally doomed.

Certainly, he saw this, as well.  Yet, he championed on, improbably laboring away, speaking and writing well into the age that so many others would have retired.  As he told a crowd of Arab-Americans in Atlanta in 1991, “We have suffered a series of defeats, but we have never become defeatists.”

It is that spirit that younger Arabs of today, and the future, should recall and carry forward.  Even if they do not adopt his aged political vernacular, his will and bigger-than-self politics are worthy of emulation.

Will Youmans is an academic and writer. He Tweets at @wyoumans.