A Hope Come True! — A Pavilion for Lebanese Students in the University City in Paris

A Pavilion for Lebanese Students in the University City in Paris
Miss Victoria Khouzami collects donations to bring the project to fruition

Paris has many faces, expressing cultural currents that differ in age and in hue; for in it the French vitalities — spiritual, literary, and artistic — have been concentrated, and in it the cultures of the civilized world have interacted, so that it has become a comprehensive, all-embracing world, holding between its two sides the marvels of history, its designs engraved with the harmony of lofty art, the eternal values of beauty, and the awareness of the sound, logical mind.

Among the most delightful of these faces is the University City, called the Cité Universitaire, meeting place of students, men and women, from the East of the earth and its West, who come to Paris in search of learning and art, and to steep themselves in its spiritual and material atmosphere...

The buildings of the University City stand in one of the suburbs of Paris, on a hill shaded by lofty trees. Each building has been erected in the name of a particular country, gathering within its walls the students of that country: there is the German building, the English, the American, the Armenian, and other buildings that gather within their frame the peoples in all their races and languages...

In the middle of that plot of ground rises a common palace called the International Pavilion, where the university students find a restaurant at moderate prices, a reading library, halls for meetings, a theater for plays and cinema, and an international cultural center with its own magazine, edited by a company of professors and students. In this central building the students also find rooms for physical exercise and ample grounds for various games in the open air...

This International Pavilion is overseen by administrative officials, among them a lady who has accompanied the University City since its founding, Miss "Jeanne Thomas" (J. Thomas), who maintains the league of university students, working through its publications for constant contact between the present students and the former ones scattered through all the countries of the inhabited world...

This pavilion was built thanks to the great American man of wealth "Rockefeller Junior," on the model of the palaces he donated for building in New York and Chicago — what the Americans call the International House...

The founding of the University City goes back to the period that followed the First World War, when humanity began searching for a way out of the human slaughter and for a lasting peace, and when the conscious, cultured classes began to pursue high ideals and sound international relations, hoping to find in them a solution that would restrain mankind from its errancy and its drifting in the current of terrifying wars... It was then that Mr. "André Honnorat," one of the French Ministers of Education, conceived of founding the University City to be an instrument of understanding and rapprochement among the peoples of the world, and he asked the University of Paris to support the idea of acquiring that land from the municipal council — and he obtained what he wished...

The first nucleus of the University City was eight buildings donated by the great man of wealth "Émile Deutsch de la Meurthe" in 1922, which opened their doors to foreign students... He was followed by the great Belgian benefactor "Biermans-Lapôtre" with a pavilion of 275 rooms for the Belgian students, and by the great Armenian benefactor "Nubar Boghos Pasha" with a building set apart for the Armenian students, and by the English Mrs. Nathan with a building for the students of Britain, and so on...

The number of buildings has now reached fifty, erected by the friends of letters, whether as individuals, as we have mentioned, or as groups through the cultural societies of the city of Paris. Governments have sometimes offered financial grants in aid of the institutions that worked to carry out a building project, but rarely have governments alone undertaken to erect the buildings themselves...

The University City has a system of its own: it is completely independent of any governmental apparatus, its affairs managed by a national foundation under the supervision of the University of Paris. Its administrative council is headed by a well-known figure from among retired men of learning or of administration, and the council has entrusted the management of the University City to a single dean who enjoys full powers and who is in constant contact with the directors of the other pavilions...

The Lebanese-French Cultural Society, founded in Paris in 1948 through the efforts of an elite of French men of learning, such as Louis Massignon and Blachère, and of certain Lebanese professors who had gone to Paris at that time for specialization and study — this society deemed it most fitting to work toward building a house that would gather the Lebanese students residing in

Paris, mending their scattered state, easing for them the many problems of lodging, lightening their heavy expenses in the capital, and uniting their hearts, so that they might be organized into a harmonious, cooperative community, in diligence and sober study, amid the cheerful atmosphere of the University City, like the rest of the students of the world.

At its session held in January 1951, on the proposal of its two late Lebanese members, Mahmoud Osseiran and Najib Khouzami, the society decided to adopt the project. Its practical realization was entrusted to one of its founders, its secretary, Miss Victoria Khouzami, who in 1954 toured the lands of Africa, meeting the Lebanese emigrants and explaining to them the noble aim of creating such an institution. Donors flocked to subscribe considerable sums, of which six million French francs have been paid, the remainder to be paid in the coming years; and a number of them enrolled as members of the said society... The society will publish the names of the donors in a booklet it is preparing for the project — and it likewise undertakes to carve the donor's name above the door of the room he presents to the Lebanese pavilion...

Miss Victoria Khouzami is at present continuing her tour of the African lands as a delegate of the society, so as to secure a sum sufficient for laying the cornerstone. Let everyone in whose breast surges the feeling of zeal for the young Lebanese university generation, residents and emigrants alike, come forward and give generously for the sake of a project that immortalizes the memory of the conscious donor and serves the students in their exile and in the season of their development and formation.

The society aims to follow its African campaign with a campaign in Lebanon to gather money from generous donors, and it hopes to find in the hearts of the Lebanese residing in their homeland the appreciation and the eagerness it has felt in the souls of the emigrants in Africa... It behooves Lebanon, land of learning and culture, to champion a practical cultural project, that it may have the first hand in serving its students in the French capital — a capital with which Lebanon's cultural bond is deep-rooted and enduring, however varied the currents and the inclinations...