On the evening of Saturday, June 15, 2019, in the presence of a grand crowd of happy family and friends, Rafik Hariri University will proudly recognize the outstanding achievements of its 2019 cohort of graduates during its 18th Annual Commencement. The 2019 Commencement will be celebrated at 7:00 p.m. in the picturesque RHU campus in Damour Mechref!
A rehearsal will be held on Wednesday, June 12, 2019, at 04:00 p.m. at the University campus. All candidates walking in the procession must attend. Permission to be present at the rehearsal has been secured from the coop employers for all students who are currently completing their summer coop. Students graduating with high distinction and high distinction are to collect their colored tassels from the Registrar’s Office on the rehearsal day.
All candidates participating in the commencement are asked to dress in the appropriate academic costume (Gown, Cap, and Hood) for the ceremony.
It is recommended that all female candidates preferably wear white clothing; if that is not possible, then a plain one-color dress will be suitable. Male candidates are recommended to wear a dark suit with a white shirt, and a plain-color necktie.
Tickets will be given to eligible candidates who have secured academic costumes and will be attending the ceremony.
For the Academic Procession, the candidates should congregate next to the Cafeteria Ninety minutes before the indicated time. Candidates who are not in their proper place on time may risk not being allowed to join the procession, nor receive their diplomas during the ceremony. Late arrivals will NOT be permitted in the Procession. Those who sneak to the Procession will NOT have their names read.
Candidates are to remain in their places until the end of the ceremony, and after all candidates have received their diplomas.
RHU is pleased to announce Dr. Amal Mudallali as the 2019 Keynote Commencement Speaker.
Dr. Amal Mudallali holds a BA in Media from the Lebanese University, a Master's Degree in Political Media from Syracuse University in New York and a PhD in Political Media from the University of Maryland. She worked for the BBC, MBC, WTN,Deutsche Welle, CNN, Future TV, Radio Netherlands, Riyadh and Annahar newspapers before joining PM Hariri's team.
Between 1998 and 2000, Dr. Mudallali served as the Director of the International Information Office of the Lebanese Prime Minister and his spokesperson. Between 2000 and 2005, she served as Foreign Affairs Adviser to late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Since 2005, she has served as the American Affairs Adviser of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and closely follows up on the UN-related issues, particularly the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
Between 2013 and 2016 she was a senior researcher at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, where she focused on Arab relations on one hand and the US, Iran and Russia relations on the other, as well as the United Nations and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. She is currently the permanent representative of Lebanon to the United Nations.
Dear distinguished guests, Representative of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Representative of Mrs. Nazik Rafik Hariri, dear President of the Rafik Hariri University, Board of Trustees, Faculty, staff, students, and above all the parents who are here on this special day for you.
There is no greater honor for me than to be here and to speak at a university named after the Late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and associated with the Hariri family. It is a family that gave Lebanon the most, in treasure and in blood, the blood of Rafik Hariri for the sake of Lebanon, for the sake of the future of this country and its people.
I want to thank Mrs. Nazik Hariri who invited me to speak today, but most importantly for continuing the mission and vision of Rafik Hariri in the humanitarian sphere, in education and in believing in the role of education in shaping the future generations of Lebanese and Arabs.
This university is the embodiment of the Hariri vision to uplift future Lebanese generations, and in fulfilling his dream of a country with great values, values of justice, equality, tolerance, and coexistence. These values that makes it more than a country, it makes it a message to the world, as the late Pope Jean Paul II said.
This is the Lebanon that Prime Minister Saad Hariri is working for too. The Prime Minister has sacrificed the easy life that he could have had, and accepted this responsibility, he accepted to carry the AL Amanah- and what a responsibility it is! He is entrusted with the fate of this country, the fate of the future of Lebanon and its people. Prime Minister Hariri carries this responsibility with commitment, dedication, dignity, and with a smile. This is the sign of leadership.
Class or 2019, you were too young to remember Rafik Hariri’s work, but walk anywhere in Beirut, in Lebanon and you will see it in infrastructure, in rebuilding Beirut, in making it the jewel of the East that it is. I am also sure that your parents have told you about the “spring” that the Lebanese lived for few amazing years under his stewardship of the Lebanese ship. We all shared his dream, we learned from him so many things but the most important thing he taught us is to never stop dreaming, He taught us that it can be done, no matter how difficult what we are doing is.
This is what I want to focus on today in my talk. I want to talk about lessons learned from Rafik Hariri, and lessons you will learn in your future bright lives, I am sure. And I want to talk about hope and the importance of hope in the lives of people, young and old, and in the lives of countries, big and small.
I came to work for Prime Minister Rafik Hariri from Washington where I lived after I finished my Ph.D. on a scholarship from the Lebanese University. He gave me the opportunity of my life, a girl from Western Bekaa with no political connections or Zai’m to support me, I was on my own.
The Prime Minister did not ask if I had political connections, or if I was from a certain sect or religion. The questions he asked were about my qualification, my experience and what I can bring to the job. I hope that you will be lucky to be interviewed by someone who sees you though this lens only.
This taught me the first lesson about Rafik Hariri; He treated people fairly, as equals regardless of their social or economic background. He valued educated people, smart and decent people, and judged them on the content of their character, and not the amount of money in their banks accounts, or family names. I hope that you do the same. Treat people as you like to be treated, with dignity and respect as human beings like us, with their dreams and fears, their strengths and weaknesses. Be fair.
Rafik Hariri believed in the power of education, and so you should too. Education for him was the best and only way to make progress, and to move forward for the youth, and for the country as a whole. He was obsessed with the future because he knew the majority in Lebanon and the Arab World will spend their lives there. The percentage of young people under 30 years old in the Arab world is one of the highest in the world. That is why he called everything he started Future.
The best gift one can give anyone is the gift of education. This is exactly what Rafik Hariri did and this is what your parents have given you. As you know Prime Minister Hariri educated 33000 students and he asked nothing in return. I remember one day the guards in his house, in Qureitem, came up and said: there are two young women at the Labban street entrance asking to see the Prime Minister. They had no appointment. PM Hariri said let them in to see what they want. They came in and gave him a big surprise. They said they were coming to ask him how should they start repaying the scholarship money that the Hariri foundation paid them. He was so touched. He told them “I do not want anything back from you”. But Can you please help educate another person when you can?
He was so proud of his education achievements that he used to show his guests the book with the names of all the Hariri Foundation graduates and say: Out of everything I did, this is the one thing that I am proud of the most”.
Prime Minister Hariri believed that wealth inequality is a barrier to education, and to social mobility. That is why he started the Hariri Foundation. He wanted to give poor people a chance, to give those who have the talent, but not the luck to be born into money and privilege, a chance.
So please if you go out there in the world, and when you do well, and I am sure you will, help educate another person, a person in need. Give them an opportunity to change their lives to the better.
And never ever stop thinking of tomorrow, never stop believing in tomorrow, in the future.
Prime Minister Hariri Cared. He cared deeply about this country, about its people. But he cared about people everywhere in the world also. We are bound by our humanity no matter where we live, how we live, what color is our skin, or the language we speak. We are One.
I remember during the Tsunami that hit the Indian ocean in 2004, Prime Minister Hariri sent a plane loaded with humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka because it was the most affected. He refused to let us write a press release about sending the humanitarian assistance, he said “one should never talk about the good that he or she does for other human beings. This is Ayeb”.
Dear Graduates, You need to care about something bigger than you, something outside yourself, it could be your family, your neighbors, your country, and the world. When I was at Syracuse University in the early 1980s we had the famine in Ethiopia. I helped organize the first fundraiser on campus to help the victims of the famine.
I am at the United Nations now and on every single day I interact with people from 193 countries from around the world. What a pleasure and a privilege this is for me. You discover when you know people from a continent away that we are the exactly the same.
I want to implore you to care, to think of others and to think of yourselves as connected to others. Martin Lauther King Jr. Said : Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. All things are connected.
Your generation is amazing! Look around you, there is 14 year old Greta Thunberg, who is changing the world by advocating for the environment. I met last week during a woman’s conference in Canada, an 18 year old from Zambia, Natasha Mwanda, who is changing the perception of Africa by championing the cause of women in Africa and the world.
Your generation is lucky, you have the IPhone, you have social media. The world is at your finger tips and the sky is the limit, to what you can do. Just do it. Be an activist who changes the world. Show that Lebanon cares. There are no walls and no borders in the world today. You are universal. You can reach anyone around the world in a split of a second. Bask in this freedom.
I am at the United Nations, the first Lebanese woman ambassador to the United Nations. Can you imagine! Girls in the crowd, can you imagine only after 74 years of the founding of the UN Lebanon sent a woman ambassador to the UN? But the fact that it happened now tells you about leadership, and about the power of one individual in affecting change. Prime Minister Saad Hariri made history by appointing the first woman finance minister, the first woman interior minister and the first ambassador to the UN. In your future lives, do not be afraid to be trail blazers, to be the change engine of things around you. Change comes only when people with courage decide it is time to do it. Be these courageous change agents. Do not be afraid, do not accept the status quo.
You are from a country non like others in the region in terms of freedoms, tolerance, and perseverance. But it is a country that puts limitations on you and pushes you to play by the same old rules that ties you down to your home town, to your sect, your Za’im, and reinforces your prejudices. You do not have to play by these rules and I hope you will be the generation who will rewrite these rules and bring about a new Lebanon where everybody is treated equally, and justly, and is given the chance that suits his or her God given talents.
As you step into the outside world, beyond the university walls, you will grapple with an important question: how much of what I will achieve in life is a result of mere luck, or a matter of effort and hard work.
I will tell you : No matter how lucky you are, your hard work will make you even luckier.
In his famous book The Outliers: The Story of Success”, Malcolm Gladwell argues that to succeed in anything in life you need to invest 10,000 hours of work in it. I do not know if I accept his thesis wholeheartedly, because it negates talent, but hard work always pays off. I can tell you that Rafik Hariri did not succeed because he sat watching TV. He worked hard, very hard and that is how he succeeded.
LOYALTY is very important in personal life, as well as in work. You have to be loyal to people who are loyal to you. Loyalty is a two-way street.
Prime Minister Hariri was loyal to all the people who worked for him, and we all, were very loyal to him in return. He will have our back and we will have his. This is how leadership works.
The last lesson I want to talk to you about, the most important, is about Hope. Hope is a force that can move mountains, and lack of it, can leave people, and countries in disarray. It is, and will be the key to your success in life.
Hope, as a famous former American Federal Reserve Chairman said “is the most powerful of all economic forces”. No matter how much economic factors you have, if you do not have hope you will not move forward.
I am telling you this because Lebanon suffers these days from a huge deficit of hope. It is self inflicted. This is worse than any economic deficit. You hear it everywhere: People speak about an impending doom, economic collapse, invasions, and the list goes on.
Well if people believe all of this, they will bring it on themselves. Burns said: The cultivation of despair can do as much to undermine the strength of some economies as the cultivation of hope can do to overcome the apparent weakness of other economies”.
I hope that you conduct your lives with the most hopeful spirit because as he said “man’s hope is a crucial element in man’s fate”. Your attitude and the way you will conduct yourself “will have an impact on this country’s future for years to come”. So tell the doomsayers that Lebanon will prevail. Lebanon will get over the current difficult situation. It always did in the past. Be positive, spread hope around you.
There is nothing like the power of example, be that powerful example.
Rafik Hariri was the most positive and hopeful person I ever met in my life. He was like a crane, he lifts up everybody around him and everybody he meets, and he charges ahead giving you the force of the whole world behind you to fight, to succeed and to win. Be that crane to people around you.
You leave today to start your lives. What a wonderful beginning to have. Your professional life is a clean slate now, a canvas, you have the power to put on it anything you want. Fill it with knowledge, with curiosity, with happiness, and keep learning everyday. If you stop learning you will stop to grow, and when you do not grow you will die.
Ask yourselves every day: How can I make the life of people around me better, how can I make my country better? How can I make the world better? Spread happiness around you, bring people together.
This is what we try to do every day at the United Nations. Representatives, from around the world get together and discuss ways how to make the world better, peaceful and sustainable.
I call the UN Noah’s arch. It is still the only place in the world where people are working together no matter what their race, color, religion, or political persuasion is, to fulfill the obligations of the United Nations Charter to quote: “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…., and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations small and large”. Last week we had the elections of the non-permanent members of the United Nations, and Estonia won a seat. The population of Estonia is 1, 316 thousand people! They will sit on the Council side by side with China that counts a population of 1.386 billion people…This is what equality at the UN looks like. Of course, China is a permanent member with a veto power but still Estonia has a voice and vote now on the Council, as China, the US, UK, Russia, and France.
Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UN. Lebanon was a founding member of the UN and was one of the 50 countries that signed the Charter in San Francisco. I am telling you that this small country, that some are saying it is on the verge of collapse, was a key player in the founding of the UN, and played an important role since then, in all the UN’s work. Lebanon was one of three countries, in addition to France and the US, that wrote the Human Rights Declaration 70 years ago. This is not a country that collapses. Do not listen to anyone. Go out to the world, be proud because you come from this resilient country. Be armed with your education and with your hope and you will conquer the world. This is what your parents expect from you after all the sacrifices that they endured, this what your country expects from you, this is what Rafik Hariri would have expected from you if he were still alive today. Do not let his dream die, make him proud. Make us all proud. Good luck.
RHU’s achievements are continuously judged by the success stories of our graduates. Some pursued illustrious academic careers after attaining advanced degrees from prestigious international universities, others have pursued occupations and now are leaders in their selected professions. What makes RHU thrive as a university that offers quality education is its people, not only the outstanding faculty, staff and students, but the alumni who create and continue a legacy of excellence and distinction.
For the fifth year, RHU will be recognizing one of its alumni who have demonstrated leadership and outstanding career achievements. Congratulations to Dr. Tarek El Masri RHU Class 2002 Accounting and Finance. Dr. El Masri received his Master's degree in Business Administration from the American University of Beirut and his Ph.D. from the John Molson School of Management at Concordia University, Canada. He participated in many international conferences and published scientific articles in magazines dealing with economics, business management, and accounting. He is currently an assistant professor at the Adnan Kassar School of Business at the Lebanese American University.
For the full list of award recipients, visit https://www.rhu.edu.lb/alumni/rhu-annual-alumni-award
Good evening esteemed dignitaries, fellow RHU faculty and administration, proud parents, and successful candidates whom from this day on I am proud to call my fellow alumni,
I would like to start by thanking Rafik Hariri University for the Alumni Honor Award bestowed upon me tonight. I will hold this trophy dear and will wear it as a badge of pride and honor for as long as I live.
I would like to thank RHU for the chance you took on me twenty years ago when you stood by me during difficult times. You made and still make unparalleled world class education affordable. Without the chance you gave me twenty years ago, I wouldn’t be standing here today with this valuable award in my hand.
Thank you for staying true to the vision on which Martyr Prime Minister Rafik Hariri had built this university. He wanted a university that graduates the leaders of today and the creators of tomorrow. He wanted affordable excellence in education and did not want a university that handed out decorative degrees. Twenty years ago HCU was the first in Lebanon to introduce the COOP learning program as part of the BBA. Today, RHU is still a trailblazer breaking new grounds with many, if not most, of the majors it provides.
I carried RHU’s vision in me and turned it into a philosophy of life. It helped me choose my major when I went for my Ph.D. studies. I chose to study governance because I believe that it is what is mostly needed and useful. I believe good governance is what my country needs the most on both the public and private sectors levels. I believe we need good governance in order to build the Lebanon we have always dreamed about, the Lebanon we deserve. The twelve years I spent away from Lebanon were necessary for me to realize that what I have been looking for has always been within me. The principals of governance are innate to us, they are part impartial to all the holy religions that came out of our region and spread to the whole world. Good governance has always been imbedded in the mission of affordable excellence at this great institution. To the proud graduates, the leaders of today and the makers of tomorrow, I say: apply what you have learned at RHU with the spirit of excellence, morality, and integrity of RHU. It is this integrity that will set you apart and make you, and all of us, successful.
I moved back to Lebanon almost two years ago. Since then, I am being asked the same question over and over again. What brought you back here? Why would you come back?
This, today, is why I came back to Lebanon.
I would not dare compare myself to Martyr PM Rafik Hariri, yet I have always seen him as a role model. He was a billionaire who at one point decided to move back to Lebanon. Why would a successful established world class billionaire business man move back to Lebanon?
I believe it is because he knew, as much as I know today, that the taste of success is much sweeter when one succeeds at home, amongst his big family.
Finally, I would like to wish all of us continued success. May we always celebrate our success here at home amongst our loving families and friends. May god guide all of us to what is best for our personal good and the general good of our beloved Lebanon.
Thank you,