From the Sudan to Medford: A Teacher's Guide FAWAZ:

Thank you Dean Whelan. It's a pleasure to be here. You will get used to my accent within a few minutes, and I apologize if it creates a problem for you, but if Dr. Ruth can have an accent, I can have one. (laughter) A new academic fashion, in the disciplines of history, anthropology, cultural criticism and others, is to foreground authors in works of scholarship. They talk about themselves. It's become very fashionable. In fact, ACLS, the American Council of Learned Societies, has a very important annual lecture called "A Life of Learning" where you talk about yourself. Listen to the Audio    Help

But it is not in imitation of what is currently fashionable that I have chosen to make my talk today autobiographical. I'm a historian who enjoys narrative history, and who elsewhere has argued that the narrative, the story telling, has conceptual implications and remains as valuable and as legitimate in modern scholarship as theory, which is far more fashionable. So here I wish to tell you a story that may hold some lessons for those scholars and others who seek freedom from the constraints imposed by the norms of many societies, and certainly by the rules of academia.

In our postmodern, post-structural, post-colonial, these are the fashionable terms, world, all the certitudes have been shaken, and the narrative may well be the only kind of story that we can relate with any kind of authority. That will be my argument and I will use myself as an example of narrative that can keep you here. If there is any lesson to be learned from this one career that is mine, it is to follow one's heart and to seize opportunities to plunge into a subject with the passion of an explorer and without any consideration of practical matters, any consideration of what is useful, what is safe, what is needed.

Many decades ago, when I was watching the man who became my husband excel at the sport of tennis, his hobby, when he was not absorbed in his otherwise all consuming medical training, I understood the elementary and essential reality that if you truly love what you do, if you give your absolute best in one area that you are passionate about, you will acquire confidence and resilience in the face of challenges that will spill over all other areas of your life and will help you do well. What matters is that in one area, for however brief a time we are on this planet, we do what we do with passion and joy. They say, for example, that the humanities and the social sciences are no longer safe careers. They are not professions. They say that the global is more important than the regional. They say that theory is more important than narrative. And my question is, are they not just making a new elitism of their intellectual preferences? I did not leave behind the biases and intolerance of the circles that surrounded us in my youth on one continent merely to embrace those of the academic circles I chose to be part of on another.

If education is to survive, the onslaught of the judgmental minority who tell us that, for example, global is better than regional, and regional is more peripheral and trivial than global, if we're going to survive that, then young scholars, such as those who are graduating here, have to be allowed to be passionate about their areas of study. They have to love it in the different ways that appeal to them in order to excel in it. One makes one's intellectual choices along the way. At least I did. Certainly, I never planned to have a career. I drifted into one because I loved what I did and just kept doing it. I was born in Khartoum, in the Sudan in Africa. Far from being the country of civil war and famine that it is to many today, in the 1940s it was a land of opportunity. Especially for educated people from the Middle East seeking employment in, what was then, British dominated territories. Many of the members of Christian, Muslim, Druse, Jews, other families, were inseparable in Khartoum.

My father's young bride, my future mother, was enchanted by the beauty of the land, the orderliness of its administration, the cosmopolitanism of Khartoum, it's elegant social life, the honesty of its people and the relative tolerance of its communities. The boundaries between foreign communities were rarely crossed, however. Along the banks of the Nile River, on the outskirts of Khartoum's marketplace were the beautiful villas of the most famous or senior British civil servants. And the Grand Hotel, as it was called, was also known because there, when it got too full, people used to sit on the shores in an annex adjacent to, but not on, the waterfront, where the streets where the junior British civil servants lived together with the leading Greek, Lebanese, Syrian, Armenian and other businessmen, teachers, and government employees. In other areas, the various national groups lived segregated lives. And the Sudanese mostly lived away from them all in a town called Umdurman.

Close to the river in Khartoum itself, the Nile river, the houses were all one story with living and dining areas, a kitchen, a room where you could take a bath and an outhouse, which was cleaned in the middle of the night by a care taker who arrived on a donkey to change the buckets half full of sand. Fans cooled the houses during the day, and at night people ate and slept in the garden if they had one, or on the flat roofs if they did not. Milk was delivered to my parents' bedside as the woman who delivered it crossed the garden hedge just where they slept.

Social life was active, but also socially conscious. Each community had its own club. The British were big on clubs. The English, of course, had the most prestigious clubs. There was also a junior club for middle and lower ranking town residents and the senior club where some nationals considered it a privilege to be invited. Everyone looked forward to evenings at the night club, especially when the famed Egyptian dancer, Tahiyya Karyoka performed. Or when elegant expatriates modeled dresses that they sold to raise money for charity. Now and again people took the boat and overnight train to go to Cairo and to enjoy vacation at the Old Shepherd's Hotel.

As a child, I conceived a great wish to be thought Sudanese. When a few years later, against our wishes and in compliance with those with of our parents, we children were sent back to Lebanon, where I grew up, to take advantage of its schools, I told everyone that I was Sudanese, not Lebanese. For a child of Lebanese parents, born and bred in Khartoum in Africa and now living in the quaint, if provincial, eastern Christian quarter of town, and as a Greek Orthodox Christian whose early years were spent among Muslims, the strict Catholic school in Beirut was not a good match for me. To the disapproval of the nuns and to the amusement of relatives, I prayed the way the Muslim people I cared for had done in the Sudan, prostrate on my knees, with my head touching the floor, my hands extended in prayer, proclaiming that God was great and merciful and that Muhammad was his prophet.

In such ways the first layers of our complicated identities begin to form. A long way back, as we try, sometimes against all odds, to be who we want to be, not only who we happen to be. How I survived the strictures of the well-meaning nuns I will never know. Probably in part because, by the time I was 13, they expelled me from their walled convent. They told my mother to find me a school more suited to my temperament. Whatever they meant, I was fully aware that this was not a compliment.

By then, we lived in what is called Ras Beirut, West Beirut, on the western side of town, known for its mix of religious groups and national communities and known for its wealth. How cosmopolitan west Beirut really was is questionable. A sociologist of Lebanon who taught many years at Princeton has shown that close family ties and traditional life here persisted, despite the appearance of urbane, cosmopolitan, modern living. But it was the most sophisticated part of the most commercial and western city among the Arab cities of the Middle East between the 1950s and the 1970s. It was where most of the foreign consulates and the foreign embassies, the schools, were located, including the renowned American University of Beirut.

A few streets down from Hamra, it was like the Fifth Avenue of Beirut, the elegant and busy shopping street where prosperous locals and foreigners mingled in shops, cafes and cinemas. It was the predictability and simplicity of daily life, and most of all the latitude given to us at home, that safeguarded our freedom and independence of mind in a society where fear of gossip governed behavior and left little room for youthful rebellion.

How I loved our apartment building, with relatives and family friends on every floor. If one said no to a request, all we had to do was approach another until, eventually, someone said yes. I'm sure some of you have lived the same way. In this way, we learned to get our way, unhampered by social convention. Our family, friends and neighbors freed us from the very traditions that they were there to uphold. Fighting convention in small ways prepared us to fight them in bigger ways as time went by. Although it was perfectly acceptable for a young woman to have an education, it was not to be single-mindedly pursued. Once she became engaged or married, after all, why seek anything more than marriage?

Love of learning, not to mention ambition on our part, made people uncomfortable. However educated they themselves were, neighbors who could see into our bedroom watched me forever bent over my writing table and became concerned, lest this excess of reading and writing would damage my eyesight, which would make me less desirable for marriage. Despite the support of family, and later of in-laws, such reservations persisted. In graduate school, some of our male friends found it bizarre that, now married, some of us would still be devoting so much time to our studies.

On one occasion, a woman friend and I commented to one of them that he should find it perfectly normal for us to spend the whole day playing cards or shopping, but that he thought it a sad reflection on us that instead we chose to spend our time in libraries. Poetic justice, then, that he ended up marrying a woman who appeared to be all feminine and fragile, but who turned out to be completely committed to work and who, despite a happy marriage, motherhood and an active social life, persisted in having a career.

The best and most memorable memories were the carefree summers in the mountains. In those days, middle and upper middle class families practiced something called estivage, leaving the capital in the hot, humid summer month for villages and resorts in the cool Lebanese mountains in the northeast of Beirut, offering spectacular views of the Mediterranean Sea below and the snowy mountains above the village of Dhour Shweir, as it was called, provided a life that was the epitome of happiness for generations of Lebanese youth who continued to cherish it in their middle age. My love for that village was put to the test by the famous professor, Columbia professor Edward Said, who criticized it bitterly. When we argued about it, he joked with me that I should write his memoirs for him since I found it so objectionable. I took pleasure, though, in reminding him that one of his own sisters had the good sense to buy a home there, and that a great many of us still keep warm memories of our time there.

Dhour Shweir branched off from a small village center. It reminded me that, when I saw the movie "Cinema Paradisio" I cried, it was so much like it. It branched off from a small village center to neighborhoods of stone houses and small apartment buildings. All terraced fields in the midst of limestone rocks and pine forest. There were no prefabricated games. There were no computers, no VCRs, no televisions. We had virtually no schedules for the leisure time, no schedule for arts or sport lessons. What we had were a great many trees, hills and valleys for picnics, walks, bicycle trips, to play in. We could cross the whole village in no time. We invented games. We play-acted. We stole fruits from the apple orchids and green grapes from the vineyards, built bonfires and read voraciously. We felt very grown up when on occasional Saturdays our fathers would take us with them to eat eggs with fat and onions in the small caf? overlooking the valley where they and their friends would discuss politics. I would also try without success to join my older sister on her outings, or would tolerate and oppress my younger brother, who is now in Norwood, Massachusetts.

When we reached our teens, differences between the cultures of the city and the cultures of the mountain that were invisible to us as children began to surface. There was a sense of family obligations, so marvelously explained by anthropologists, particularly one lady called Andrea Rugh, in a study of a small city and village. These differences and obligations applied more to the villages and towns of Mount Lebanon than to western Beirut where the mix of populations and the inevitable exposure to outsiders had weakened convention in comparison to the more insulated mountain areas.

There was no privacy. I cannot think of a word in Arabic for privacy, even today. There was no privacy. Everything was village business. When the grocer, protested that it was unseemly for teenage girls to ride bicycles, we gave them up. When village matrons gently told us that it was unbecoming to speak loudly or to show our teeth when we laughed or to spend unsupervised time with young men, we learned, with varying degrees of success, to conform. We toned down our style, we took up needlework, we learned to cover our mouth when we laughed and found pleasure in taking leisurely walks through the village, or going to the movies, or playing volleyball or tennis at the local club. We loved the village enough to respect its traditions. Although with less and less conviction as the years went by.

The predictability of my summers was not echoed in my schooling. After my rout by the nuns, my mother enrolled me in the much sought-after, premier school for girls called the College Protestant Francais of West Beirut. I fell immediately in love with that school. It was as bright as my first school had been gloomy. As modern as my first school had been antiquated. As diverse as my first school had been homogenous. At the convent, the overwhelming majority of students were Catholics from East Beirut, whose mothers had attended the same school. At the College Protestant my classmates were Jews, Druze, Suni, Shi`i, Christians. They came from different backgrounds, high society but also low, and most of all, nouveau riche, showily nouveau riche.

I turned my energies to my studies, where in the past I had just mostly spent my time joining my fellow conspirators to torment my robed instructors. For the first time, I fell in love with the Arabic language because of one charismatic teacher. Now she is a legend among the thousands of us whose lives she touched. She drew us into the mysteries of grammar and the beauties of literature. She was one of the best in a series of wonderful teachers who introduced us to two worlds. Our own Lebanese one, but also the one of France, whose detailed maps all of us could draw from memory, and whose history all of us had at our fingertips.

Although the College gave us excellent tutelage in our own language and country, like foreign-run schools in colonial and post-colonial days, it also taught us notions of European, especially French, superiority. We were instructed about the world on our side of the Mediterranean only in relation to its past, its past glories. Of the present, of the harsh realities outside the classroom, the build up Arab aspirations and disappointments, we knew nothing. We were wooed in the cocoon, nurtured by the beauties of the arts, the humanities, the social and natural sciences, but cut off from the harsh realities around us.

We were so encouraged to speak French with one another that, even now, in middle age, we lapse into French when we meet former schoolmates. At home, in that way that people who only speak one language either despise or admire, we spoke a mix of Lebanese dialect and French. We knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that it was more elegant to speak French than Arabic, and more refined to listen to Western, than to Middle Eastern, music. Unlike today's youth, we would not have been caught dead belly-dancing, but it was chic to tango and cha-cha.

In the 1950's, war was at our doorsteps and civil war in our midst. The refugees from the first Arab-Israeli encounters were flooding into Lebanon to settle in the shanty towns on outskirts of the capitol, but like the three monkeys, we neither heard, saw, or spoke of them. Prejudice comes in different forms, one of which is to look the other way. We did just that. We learned to pretend that regional problems did not exist. We built walls, sometimes quite literally, around unpleasant realities around us. On the way to the mountains, near the harbor on the outskirts of Beirut, we drove by a famous slum which was completely wiped out during the civil war after 1975. It was called Carantina. We drove by those slums where ragged children could be seen from passing cars such as ours until cement walls were erected around the slums. By such brief encounters with poverty and misery, we were not disturbed. Everything conspired to keep us ignorant and blissful, and we let it happen.

What an awakening it was to attend the university after high school. As it was generally understood that education must serve some practical purpose even for those women who were not expected to have a career, we, the youth, were encouraged to learn something useful. I signed up, though, for anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and literature. I enjoyed my readings, but most of all I was swept off my feet by history. Any history. All history. My days were filled with the Ottoman Turkish centuries, the Eastern question, the American frontier, Arab history, the Russian Revolution, the Age of Nationalism, the German underground, and my favorite, the French Revolution. I puzzled over why and why not, or how empires, popular movements, revolutions shaped our destinies.

I could not get enough of it, and I crammed a two-year MA program of eight courses and a thesis into nine months, but by then politics could no longer be ignored. The protective cocoon that I had lived in burst as soon as I attended university. The student body was more diverse than any other I had ever known, and the many who cared deeply about national causes made it impossible for the rest of us to remain indifferent to the tensions in Lebanon and around it. For a long time, I refused to be swayed by the arguments of the pan-Arabists, blind to the obvious need that you need more than one faction to have a fight. I blamed the Arabists for the escalation of violence on campus, as shouting matches were replaced by brawls, and as it became more and more common for students to hurl chairs, fire hydrants and anything else they could lay their hands on at one another. Eventually guns made their way onto the campus, but by that time I had moved on to study in the United States, where I had to face battles of a different kind.

The 1967 War was a turning point. It changed all of us. Throughout the Six Day War, which started on Monday, June 5th, the American University of Beirut campus was delirious with excitement. We followed the war on the radio. Overnight the student union was turned into a makeshift command center for the war effort, where students could debate the news, donate blood, and register for the army. Buses with medical and other students headed for Damascus. In the middle of campus on the seventh floor of the student campus, which housed the student union, large speakers were hastily installed to rally students or inform them of the latest news from the front. Students listened intently to the voice of the Arab radio station from Cairo as it described the Arab victories. Of course it was nonsense, but that is what they described. They cheered when they heard of one Israeli plane after another being shot down. Classes had been suspended, and were never resumed that semester. Many students left for home, while the Administration provided those who were stranded on campus with money to live on. Commencement, which I had awaited for four years, was never held.

How brutal was the unexpected news of the crushing Arab defeat. In a memorable television broadcast on the evening of Thursday, June 8th, the Egyptian leader, Gamala bin Nassar, broke the news and announced his resignation. The news shook the Arab world. Student anger and frustration erupted in demonstrations and riots outside and inside the campus. Within minutes of his resignation, crowds poured out onto the street, along the main arteries, to demonstrate support for the losing Arab cause. In front of the Egyptian Embassy, by accident near our house, and along the street which I described as very elegant, the Hamra Street, all over West Beirut, which is supposedly the Western cosmopolitan one, the crowds smashed every symbol they could find of the Lebanese right and of foreign presence, including hotels, shop windows, and foreign cars. Beirut was in a blackout for a week or more.

From the roof of our apartment building, where my family lived, we watched the swelling crowd. We heard the angry chants. And we understood in some fundamental, and yet unarticulated, way how momentous it all was, and how our lives had been changed forever. Lebanon could no longer remain aloof from the tragedies around it. For many of us, the first reaction was denial. Things had not changed, and life would go on as it always had, although of course it never did for the Lebanese, for the Arabs, for the Jews, for all who were drawn into this catastrophic or momentous event. For the first, but certainly not for the last, time, I threw myself into the past as a relief from the present. I discovered the primary sources of nineteenth century history. I took special pleasure reading about the past beauty of Beirut's landscapes and the serenity of its gardens and mulberry plantations. I discovered the location and the erosion of the old city walls. I worked my way into a trance of bygone days.

The information turned out to be invaluable when I applied to graduate school in the United States. My husband had decided to complete his medical training here. For my course of study, I proposed to look into the causes behind the growth of the most important Arab city in the 20th Century, as its new preeminence clearly could not be explained by economic or geographic factors alone. In 1970, I began my graduate studies at Harvard University.

As soon as I arrived at the university, my first job was to undo the effects of a Lebanese male student I had never met, who had spread the word around the Middle East Center that I was not serious about my studies, and that all I had done in college in Lebanon was to walk up and down Hamra, the elegant street. Presumably, he had seen me there because he too had walked it up and down. He was not the only one. The first Harvard professor I ever approached, a giant in his field, still a giant, immediately decided from the brief conversation on the steps of the building, that I could never make it through graduate school, as he is still fond of telling me, enchanted that he was mistaken. Indeed he was.

These were not the only surprises. You leave some struggles and you start others. What had been a virtue in Lebanon now had become a handicap in the United States of the 1970's. In Lebanese society, political neutrality, or tolerance, had been a virtue hard to acquire and hard to maintain because of the factionalism. In Cambridge, Massachusetts after the 1960's, tolerance and neutrality were regarded as something of a defect. I think one word hurled at me once was that I was "wishy-washy". To be middle-class and liberal was positively out of fashion in 1970. Well-meaning, idealistic young American friends could hardly be expected to have much sympathy for foreign students with political opinions different from their own. It was not easy for them but it was not easy for us, either. Many of us from the Middle East, particularly women, at times felt a bit patronized by them. We understood that our new friends meant well, but we did not necessarily share their concerns or priorities.

I have to tell you that some of these leftists are now as right wing as can be. Neither our political views nor our work was trendy by their standards, but they were important to us. Enter my mentor at Harvard, who was as tolerant as those students were implacable in their left-ism, as tactful as others had been judgmental. Elsewhere I have expressed my admiration particularly for this professor. Here I would simply like to single out his tolerance for different approaches to scholarship. In his own work, he combined intellectual, social, and political history, and he accepted good work of any kind, from broad histories to very specialized histories, and he took an interest in students of very different political or other intellectual inclinations. I feel privileged to have basked in the warmth cast by the spirit of this gentleman.

The war that broke out in Lebanon in 1975 lasted until 1990. It deeply affected all of us who cared about the region. We worried sick about our friends, our relatives, our neighbors, and just about everyone we knew. We were at a loss about what to do. All day we listened to the BBC, and to every other station with news about the war. We were paralyzed, and simply did not know how to cope with the situation we could not alter. For a while, the war put into question everything we were doing in the United States. How could I study nineteenth century history when Beirut and the Middle East was suffering so terribly? How could I read descriptions of the city's growth when it was being torn apart? I turned to European history, and took a new interest in its debates. I also became interested in American counterfactual history, in anthropology and literature, which I had always liked.

One night a friend called me from long distance in the United States to tell me that her father-in-law, a Maronite Lebanese Christian, meaning a Catholic Christian, who had supported the left, although he was Catholic Christian, had been burned to death in revenge for a sectarian killing in Lebanon because his identity card listed him as a Christian, even though he was totally averse to their politics. The absurdity of the Civil War, even though it was inevitable, the absurdity of it was so obvious that I despaired. I told myself, I'm either going to go insane, or I'm going to stop caring. Blessed escape. Somehow I shut my emotions out, pushed the world back. Overnight I shut off the painful present and plunged again into the past. I stopped talking about the War, reading about it, and I removed myself to earlier centuries.

In doing so, I had, in fact, rid myself of any vestiges of innocence left from my childhood and high school. Resilience comes at a cost. Resilience also has its rewards. I became harder, but more professional, more competitive, better suited to survive American academia. That freed me to launch into a rich and wonderful career. I have since been blessed to work with colleagues I admire, students I love, and subjects I find fascinating.

If academia is to prosper, and that's my conclusion, it must cherish imagination, creativity, abundance, even extravagance of thought. Better that, with all the dangers of creativity, than predictability and its dullness. I will go even further. Better creative history, meaning almost fictional history, than dull history. Better risky interpretations than predictable ones. My argument to my students is, let us take risks and stretch our imagination, or at least be grateful for those who do. You, as parents, as graduates, and others, we thank you for your appreciation of academia, and for making our work enjoyable and rewarding. We are committed to it, and we hope that the passion and -- last point -- the passion we share for our work will triumph over the fashion of the day. Thank you very much.
 

The 300 Most Prominent Lebanese Americans

There are about 3 million Lebanese-Americans, and as a community, we've been demonstrating our loyalty, inventiveness and courage on behalf of the United States for over 100 years. Here are just a few of the more famous ones -- people you may know!

Entertainers 
Ron Afif, Recorded 5 or so albums for the Pablo label. His latest being "Solitude" a solo effort. His mother`s brother is the celebrated guitarist Ron Anthony (Sinatra's guitarist 1985-1993). His father Charlie was a middle weight champion fighter
Walid Akl, World-renowned pianist
Paul Anka, One of America's first pop teen idols.
Yasmine Bleeth, Actress in the "Baywatch" Series
John Bowab, Directed "Soap," "Benson," "Bosom Buddies," "The Facts of Life," and the last season and a half of the "The Cosby Show."
Jonathon Brandmeier, Radio talk show host
Don Bustany, Created and produced "American Top 40" and "American Country Countdown." Recently added "Casey's Top 40" and "Casey's Country Countdown."
Elie Chaib, Dancer. Both youngest and oldest performer with the famous Paul Taylor company. In 1992 he was named the "Dancer of the Year" by the New York Times.
Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar
George S. Dibie, Emmy Award-winning cinematographer-director. Now President of the International Photographers Guild.
George Durgom, Through the years, managed Jackie Gleason, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Marilyn Monroe.
Bechara El Khoury, World-renowned musician.
Rosalind Elias, Opera prima donna who  hit the high notes at the Met., NY.
Shannon Elizabeth, (Fadal) - Best known for her "American Pie" movie where she plays the sexy Czech student. Her website: http://www.ShannonElizabeth.com/
Jamie Farr, Actor. Farr is best known in his role as Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger in the TV show M*A*S*H.
Sammy Haggar, Former lead vocalist for Van Halen.
Khrystyne Haje, Actress. Best known in her role as Simone Foster in the television series Head of the Class.
Jack Hanna, Popular host of the hit television series, "Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures," one of America's most beloved naturalists and adventurers.
Salma Hayek, Superstar of Hollywood hits such as "Desperado" with Antonio Banderas and "Fools Rush In". Salma is mixed Lebanese and Mexican.
Dan Hedaya, Played many flavorful character parts in features, often portraying cops (The Hunger, 1983; Tightrope, 1984; Running Scared, 1986; The Usual Suspects, 1995), crime figures, or crusty regular guys. His most indelible impression was made in Blood Simple (1984), the landmark independent feature debut of the Coen brothers. 
Waleed Howrani, World-renowned musician, concert pianist and composer.
Paul Jabara, Oscar winning composer for "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday.
Mike Joseph,  Pioneered the concept of a radio programming consultant in 1958 
Mario Kassar, Former chairman of Carolco Pictures, the movie company that produced such blockbusters as Rambo, Terminator 2, and Total Recall. At one time he ran a billion-dollar industry.
Asaad Kelad, Has done numerous series like "Family Ties" and episodes of "The Facts of Life," "Who's the Boss?," "WKRP in Cincinnati," etc.
Herbert Khaury, Lebanese-American folk singer known to all of his fans as "Tiny Tim"
Callie Khoury, First woman to receive an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay -- for "Thelma and Louise"
Emile Kuri, Nominated eight times for films like Mary Poppins. Won the Oscar twice -- for "The Heiress" and Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
Wendie Malick, "One of the stars of NBC’s hit show Just Shoot Me
Kristy McNichol, Actress. Best known in her role as Bubby Lawrence on the late 1970s TV show Family. Also best known in her as an undercover cop on the TV show Empty Nest.
Michael Nader, Actor in the "Dynasty" series.
Michelle Nader, Comedy writer of the TV Series "Spin City"
Kathy Najimy, Actress and activist, "Veronica's Closet", "Sister Act", "Rat Race". Her website: http://kathynajimy.com/
Michael Nouri, The leading man who starred in the movie Flashdance; later seen in TV's "Love and War" sitcom.
Harold Ramis, Wrote and directed over the past twenty years over a dozen films, several of which are among the highest grossing comedies of all time. In 1978, Animal House became a blockbuster, and Harold began a long, successful (and hilarious) string of hits, including Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Back to School, Groundhog Day, Analyze This and most recently, Bedazzled.
Keanu Reeves,  That's right. Keanu was born in Beirut in the 1970's. He is mixture of Hawaiian, Chinese, and American.
Diane Rehm, Host and executive producer of "The Diane Rehm Show" on National Public Radio (NPR).
Fouad Said, The cinematographer who designed Cinemobile -- the first customized van for filming on location -- while working on the TV series "I Spy". For this achievement, he received a Technical Academy Award in 1970
Fred Saidy, Wrote two classics, "Finian's Rainbow" and "Bloomer Girl."
Lucie Salhany, Former chairwoman for Fox Broadcasting Co. and former chairwoman for United Paramount (TV) Network
Elie Samaha, Producer and owner of Franchise Pictures; Films: Driven, The whole nine yards, The Pledge, Battle Field Earth, Heist, Exit Wounds
Neil Sedaka, Lebanese American singer
Shakira, World-renowned rock singer. Born in Columbia of Lebanese descent.
Tony Shalhoub, One of the alien men in Men In Black
Omar Sharif, Born Michael Shalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt in 1932, to Lebanese parents.
Tom Shidyac, Director. Directed such well known movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and The Nutty Professor
G. E. Smith, Former bandleader for many years for NBC TVs "Saturday Night Live."
James Stacy, Played James Stacy in the popular TV drama "Laramie."
Michael Tadross, Was the unit production manager for Die Hard III, Devil's Advocate, and many other movies.
Julie Taymor, The creative mastermind behind the Broadway version of Disney's "The Lion King."  She also directed the powerful film "Titus." 
The Late Danny Thomas, Founder of St. Jude Hospital for Children, comedian and star of sit-com, "Make Room For Daddy".
Marlo Thomas, Actress and Producer. Daughter of the late actor Danny Thomas. Marlo has won Emmy Awards and is best known for her role in That Girl
Tony Thomas, Producer. Son of the late actor Danny Thomas. Has won Emmy Awards for his productions
Tiffany, The first teenage singer to have her first two singles both hit number one
Gabriel Yared, Academy Award winner, music score composer for the movie "The English patient".
Amy Yasbeck, Actress. Played in the TV series Wings and played in the movies Problem Child and Robin Hood Men in Tights.
David Yazbeck, Wrote the lyrics and score for "The Full Monty"
Frank Zappa, Former legend in the world of rock

Ambassadors, Diplomats and Politicians
Chris Abboud, Nebraska State Senator
James Abdnor, US Senator of South Dakota (1981-1986)
James Abourezk, U.S. Senator of South Dakota (1971-1979)
Spencer Abraham, The new Secretary of Energy of the United States of America . He is a third-generation American of Lebanese descent. Born in Michigan. Was also a U.S. Senator representing the state of Michigan.
John Ash, Mayor, Olean (NY)
William N. Aswad, Vermont State Representative
Victor Atiyeh, Governor of Oregon (1979-1987)
Suzanne Azar, Mayor, El Paso (TX) 1989-1991
John Baldacci, Congressman (ME)
Michael Baroody, Asst Secretary, US Department of Labor (1985-1988)
William Baroody Jr, Asst to the President, Office of Public Liaison (1973-1977)
Timothy Bryan, City Council Member, Massillon (OH)
David Cappiello, Connecticut State Representative
George Crady, Florida State Representative
Mitch Daniels, Assistant to the President, Political and Intergovernmental Affairs (1985-1987) 
Pat Danner, Former Congresswoman (MO)
Brenda Elias, Mayor, Franklin (NH) 1989-1994
George Ellis, Texas Court of Appeals
Edward J. Elum, Jr. - Judge on the Massillon (OH) Municipal Court.
Joe Farris, West Virginia State Delegate
Elias Francis, Former Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico.
Edward Gabriel, U.S. Ambassador to the kingdom of Morocco
Joseph P. Gan