An Office of One's Own at AUC - The American University in Cairo

An Office of One’s Own at AUC
Ernest Wolf-Gazo, Professor, Philosophy Department
Virginia Woolf published a little book A Room of One’s Own in 1928. In due course this published lecture
advanced to the status of a manifesto of the emancipation of modern women in Europe. We find a
straightforward message in the beginning of the lecture, “… a woman must have money and a room of her
own if she is to write fiction.” Likewise, a modern professional person needs an office in order to function
and do the respective duties expected. Especially the modern academic teacher needs a place to feel secure
and comfortable grading papers, writing articles, conducting office hours and, at times, for brain-storming
sessions. Not too mention preparing committee meetings, class schedules, and storing the personal library.
Despite the e-mail and internet the academic teacher needs an office to call his or her own for the wellbeing
of professional existence. What the office is to the modern professional academic is the kitchen to the
modern cook. Nomads and part-time teachers usually don’t have offices of their own and are not always
happy with their situation. They seek sedentary existence and try to realize what Woolf’s metaphor
suggests, a place of work they can call their own.
To have one’s office means that you have achieved a certain academic status, somewhat independent from
administrators, students, and academic - street- people. Of course, the status of the academic, senior or
junior, administrator, low or high, reveals the hierarchy of the university. Offices tend to be larger and more
comfortable the higher the place in the hierarchy. But there are plenty of people without their own office
and must share office space, cubbyholes, or make-shift tables to simple grade freshman exams and papers.
More important than anything else, a place to think in privacy and freedom is the most important value of
one’s office. For thinking and place are in a subtle way connected.
Let us take the example of the most celebrated philosopher of the 20 th century, Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger and his famous cabin (that he called hut) are synonymous for thinking. It was in his hut, deep in
the Black Forest region of southern Germany, that the philosopher and let thinking and writing do its work.
It was also the place Germans call Heimat (there is no equivalent in English except “feeling at home”).
Likewise, perhaps not every academic has a hut to spend to do thinking, but he or she must have a place,
usually the office, in which the person feels “at home” in the university. I suspect the reason why
Heidegger’s hut has become world famous among global academics is that all yearn, deep inside their soul,
to take refuge in a hut and call it their home of thinking and freedom. The mythological hut in the psyche of
every academic person functions as a sort of womb that nourishes and shelters the body and soul from the
daily academic grinding and people who have forgotten what it means to think. Their business activities are
spent in workshops, scheduling, appointments, committees, and academic politics. Of course, some of us,
since the 1960s, discovered the office as a temporary shelter as a homeless ex-husband. The modern
Xanthippe and her kids are not interested in truth, jails and the like, but villas and four-wheel-drives.
The first time I really became aware of the status of the office in the academic hierarchy setting was at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore. This venerable institution of graduate studies, introduced the Ph.D.
(imported from the German Humboldt system) to the Unites States in 1871 for the first time, lodged its
philosophy as well as classical language department in the basement of its historic 19 th building, that looked
more like a dungeon than offices for college teachers. Later, in Georgetown University , I noticed that the
philosophy department offices were located (better squeezed) underneath its campus library. I wonder was
this a sign of the status and value of philosophy in general in the world of American academic life I could
not imagine the economics, business, not to mention law departments being housed in such manner.
Computer science department didn’t exist yet in the 1970s. In Europe, especially Bonn University, where I
experienced my first office the interior design and place was stately: High ceilings, massive walls, and a
philosophy library reminding me of those old 18 th century paintings depicting Renaissance libraries of
learning. No wonder, the philosophy institute is housed in the former palace of the archbishop and elector
of Cologne of the powerful Wittelsbach family. This was enlightenment environment, rococo style, and 19 th
century humanistic scholarship.

I started my academic life 1991 at AUC in Room
240 of the English and Comparative Literature
Department housed in the beautiful 19 th century
building belonging to the former Khedive of
Egypt. I felt at home immediately since it
reminded my of old Europe and the Bonn palace.
The room is located just at the entrance of the
ECL department adjacent to the old lift on the
second floor and exhibits, in details, 19 th century
technology. The elevator (to use American
English instead lift) reminded me of Art Deco and
historic Paris. It is as one book title has it Paris in
Cairo. Aside the old world feeling there was the
convenient walk to my nearby flat (American
English Apartment) in Garden City, another old European womb to escape the signs of time – East or West.
At one point I turned Room 240 into a mini Kindergarten. Due to some unforeseen medical circumstance I
had to take over completely the daily care of my infant son Sinan, born in Ankara, whom I brought with my
own hands, six months of age to AUC. In Ankara I had an office in the mathematics department, old style:
black board, chalk and ruler. Sinan, named after Mimar Sinan by me, in honor of the greatest of Osmanli
architects. I gladly recall the late AUC President Gerhardt who lived on the same 10 th floor at 8 Ibrahim
Naguib Street as our flat. Sometime we shared the elevator or even, if that didn’t function, walked together
all the way 10 floors. On one of our elevator trips he meet Sinan and asked his name, immediately his eyes
would turn bright up and say “Ah, the great Mimar Sinan of Istanbul”. Dr. Gerhardt was the one of the very
few persons we met, outside Turkey, who immediately recognized the significance of Sinan as the greatest
architect of Islamic Civilization. Seeing Istanbul at dawn from a boat is a dream-like experience. The little
Sinan Pasha has prospered since at BISC and recognized by old hands and guards at AUC as the AUC baby.
The security staff treats him like their own son seeing this child grow into a young man by 2008. Sinan’s
mother, Azita, an Iranian transfer student from Tehran, Ankara, then AUC, has the honor of being the first
and only Iranian female student to graduate from AUCs history with highest honors from the Psychology
department. Again, the mini kindergarten at Room 240 was set up for Sinan. Of course, I had to think of
baby sitters while I was teaching my classes, from 11 to 2pm, UTR, the notorious core curriculum course Phil
220 and others. I had an idea and worked out very well in the long run: I would appoint two students from
my previous class, boy and girl, to baby sit for the time I was teaching. I had a lucky hand, since the students
turned out to be bright, a sense for children and responsibility, and very important, a sense of humor. I
understand that some baby sitting sessions must have been very successful since I heard that some got
engaged, while sitting for Sinan. Thus, I owe many thanks not only to my office but also to my AUC students.
Some I would meet years later when they happily recalled the baby sitting in Room 240. This was at the time
when the center of Cairo, Tahrir Square, the Egyptian Museum, and Sheik Rihan Street were rocked by
terrorist attacks, not to mention my building in Garden City, at one time. Sinan and I escaped from the first
blast at Tahrir by fifteen minutes and the one in Garden City, five minutes after Iftar, I escaped by ten
minutes. That was AUC in the early 1990s. There was not one AUC female student with headgear, difficult
to believe in 2008, but true. What happened in the meantime needs serious sociological analysis. How was
AUC transformed from a ladies and gentlemen institution of learning to an institution for mass education
Feminism, post-modern ideologies, political correctness, sexual harassment complaints, equal opportunity
demands, academic-street-fighter and blue-eyed kids from bored upper-middle-class American society
seeking the “Arab experience”, had not yet hit AUC from overseas. The atmosphere was more or less still
free-wheeling, gay (in the traditional sense of the word), polite, and fun.
My office was in the vicinity of Professor John Rodenbeck, a tireless campaigner for the preservation of
historic Cairo and Professor Doris Enright Shukri who headed up the department for decades successfully. I

occupied Room 240 until 1998 when philosophy was granted department status after a prolonged struggle
with the administration. I remember being on a committee that had to decide about a new major for
accounting: it took ten minutes to decide thumbs up. I wondered, can philosophy really compete with
accounting The ECL department comprised
philosophy, history, art and drama. In due course they
went their own way and luckily I was to see Dr.
Mahmoud El Lozy as one of my office neighbors in the
newly constructed Falaki building. Philosophy was
housed, temporarily, in the old Falaki building, a
former dormitory build in 1968. Of course, that year
evoked many happy memories as an undergraduate
student in the US and graduate student in Europe. The
philosophy people along with others like Arabic
Studies had to swallow sand and fine dust coming from
the new construction site what was to be the New
Falaki building next door. The temporary offices at the old Falaki were, no doubt, a negative experience of
office occupation. But, like old fashioned coal miners, they swallow the black dust to feed their families. I
was to occupy Room 210 in the old Falaki for several years until we moved to the new Falaki next door in
September 2001, taking Room 627. Of course, that date recalls dark feelings of doom and a sense that not
all is well in the real world. Ironically, on 9/11 I was attending the international Leibniz-Conference in Berlin
and almost at the same time (USA time) I delivered a lecture on Leibniz’s concept of universal peace (the
timing I found out later). What an irony I wondered are we going back to the stone-age, or was the idea of
a universal peace of Leibniz and Kant simply illusory Now, everyone is ready for a big move to the new
campus of AUC at New Cairo. I will be occupying my fourth office at the new campus.
I still experienced the old Falaki campus as an oasis of green with trees providing shade for students and
staff during lunch hour. The two tennis courts would provide a little entertainment. There was the first, but
temporary AUC kindergarten installed in the far corner behind one of the tennis courts, until it was moved to
the Greek campus as the official kindergarten. It was
more of a day care in those days in which Sinan and
few other kids had their first pre-school experiences.
My new office in old Falaki, Room 210, was a tiny
box-like place. I called it “my box”, with love. My old
couch from the main building was transported to the
box, a small desk and bookshelves for my private
books, and, an electric typewriter. I had not yet
advanced to a computer. But my typewriter skills
remained intact ever since I took a typewriting course
(with mechanical typewriter) in high-school, being
the only boy among twenty-five girls. In the early
1960s girls were still expected to become secretaries.
Slowly I graduated to a computer level and still retain the skill of “typing” blind on the computer keyboard.
Again, the mobile phone didn’t yet exist at AUC until 1998. The mobile phone, on its tenth anniversary,
caused a revolution among AUC students, no doubt. Since the majority of undergraduate students at AUC
are female students, who benefitted most from this revolution for obvious reasons, student life has changed
ever since. Social bondings are more subtle, more stealth-like, and the mobile phone turned into a girl’s best
friend. With the inauguration of the computer, in the late 1990s, for all faculty and staff the twenty first
century had arrived. Yet, instead of less work, the computing machine demands more attention and more
work. Subtle psychological needs aroused had been discovered and the younger generation seems to lose
the touch for polite and civilized conversation, in the old style.

At last the new Falaki Academic Center was inaugurated in 2001. It is an impressive architectural
achievement with it subtle combination of up-to-date engineering craft and Egyptian-Islamic features. The
third floor cafeteria with it imposing Mamluk-like chandeliers and enlarged mashrabia windows gives a
heighten sense of aesthetic sensibility. Philosophy advanced to department status and was housed on the
sixth floor adjacent to the construction engineering department and parts of the visual arts department,
specifically the offices for the drama people. This choice is somewhat unusual, but turned out to be a happy
marriage. My room was 627 across from colleagues like Edward Smith and Safwan Kedr, whom I still
remember being on some committee, before the institution of the Senate was finalized. I had considered
the pre-senate days much better organized and gave everyone in respective departments the chance to
meet, at random, any other faculty member on some committee. This is, unfortunately, no longer the case,
unless one is a member of the senate. The philosophy people and construction engineering people
developed an excellent rapport. I tried to figure out why. It seems that that the engineering people are a
very different species from the philosophy people they don’t see each other as direct competitors in the
academic arena. Moreover, the engineers are not ideologically motivated as are most arts people. They go
by fact, measurement, and common sense. This serves as a corrective to the sometimes illusory world of big
ideas and fantastic philosophic projects. But both, logic and imagination are necessary for a creative way of
handling the world, as I tell my students many times. I feel somehow sad to part from my engineering
colleagues who provided a congenial atmosphere to “live in”, despite some being skeptical about our
philosophic enterprise, being afraid to “messing up “their students. Not too far, next to Ed Smith, I always
found my old and new colleague Mahmud El Lozy, a talking encyclopedia with a great sense of humor. I
have no doubt, not only the philosophy people, but also the engineering colleagues will miss his diabolic
laughter.
I enjoyed my years in Room 627 in the new Falaki. As I look about I still see my old couch from the main
building that supported me many times in more depressive moods. I see through my mashrabiya-like
window and handle the Bauhaus type window frame. I see from right to left the roof tops of, the new
Shepherd Hotel, Semi-Ramis Intercontinental, the Mugamma (called by intellectual literature students
Kafka’s castle), then the Arab League Building with its perennial green flag at half-mast, Nile Hilton, and next
to it the Egyptian Museum. The Nile I see in my mind’s eye like a silver horizon behind the rooftops. In my
office I assembled items that have meaning for me only, perhaps, but make me feel at home, in the center of
Cairo. There are the posters from Turkey, Istanbul, Cappadocia, the poster from Spain’s old Salamanca
University, a map of Europe, a poster of the city and university of Bonn, a photo-poster of the Iranian city of
Isfahan, books lined up on my desk, from Aristotle’s philosophy to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.
There is a huge poster from the first international Mullah Sadra Conference held in Tehran in 2000, while the
philosophy professor Khatami was still President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mullah Sadra, one of the
great Persian Islamic thinkers from the golden Savafid period of Persia’s history. And there across the wall is
the map of the Roman Empire that gives an idea of what a kind of world we could have today, when Egypt
was part of that Empire and provided wheat of the Roman army. I shock my office visitor, using this map, to
explain that Egypt would actually qualify best for membership of the EU because it has a shared history and
many things more. The faces turn enigmatic. And there are some digital photos mounted on the closet
doors: I see my Doktorvater the late Herr Professor Wolfgang Kluxen in his office, the old philosophy seminar
library that was always my second home as a student in Bonn, and there is Habermas while a DVP visitor to
AUC in 1998. The plants in the office give a touch of jungle to the atmosphere. I imagine Tarzan and Jane
and the chimp Chitta from my boyhood cinema days. The front door to my office, aside the typical name tag
and office hour schedule also has digital photos on the top of the door, my hero Kant, a little lower Max
Weber, and a funny photo of my son Sinan and I. Some students have written comments on the photos like
“keep going with your enthusiasm”, or “we need more jokes, with intelligence”, I wrote underneath, “a kiss
for our enemy”. Some apparently don’t always agree and ripped up some photos, but I pasted them
together again. After this last spring semester 2008 these photos will vanish into my private archive.
Hopefully I will see my engineering colleagues at the new campus and we shall reminisce about the good old
Falaki days, without exaggerating. I would like to thank my construction engineering colleagues for making
my life on the sixth floor congenial and providing an atmosphere that inspires collegial well-being.