American University of Beirut
Office of the President
PO Box 11-0236
Riad El Solh 1107 2020
Beirut, Lebanon

Dear President Khuri,

We are among the over 300 conference attendees and 90 guest lecturers who, over the last 12 years, have participated in the vibrant intellectual life of the Center for American Studies and Research. We are writing to express both our deep appreciation for the Center, as well as our concern about the Center's possible future.

There is simply no place like the Center anywhere in the world. It is a uniquely-situated catalyst for the field of American Studies. Since 2005 its bi-annual conferences and robust visiting lecture series have been generative sites for intellectual exchange among scholars from the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The publication of the Center’s conference proceedings have provided important resources to expand interdisciplinary scholarship on the linkages between the United States and the region. Our dissertation chapters, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and scholarly monographs have been indelibly improved for having engaged with CASAR’s intellectual community.

We are gravely concerned about the immediate and long-term future of this extraordinary site of interdisciplinary intellectual exchange. We have learned that all searches for future CASAR faculty have been cancelled, and there is no plan for continuity for the Center into academic year 2016-2017. The potential restructuring of this important, productive, and by any measure successful academic enterprise will have significant negative repercussions on possible future scholarship. We implore you to reconsider this action, and to put CASAR on a path to continue catalyzing the work it has been doing for over a decade: generating some of the best and most impactful research in American Studies.