Making it possible for others to enjoy an experience that “profoundly affected my life”
November 2, 2020
“It was thrilling to be a student at AUB in the 1970s: world-class faculty; a very international and politically-engaged student body; and the chance to live in Beirut, a fascinating city,” remembers Cynthia Myntti (MA ’74). “The experience profoundly affected my life.” It was also a bit challenging. “There was no funding available for American graduate students, so I had to take out a bank loan and work while I was a student to pay for my room and board.”
It was that experience that prompted Myntti and her husband, Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn, a physician specializing in international public health and published poet, to make a planned gift to AUB to establish an endowed fellowship that will support US citizens doing graduate degrees in the social sciences or humanities related to the Middle East. “With this support we intend to give select young Americans the opportunity for deep learning about the Middle East through graduate studies at AUB. Based on my own experience at AUB, I believe this deep learning comes from course work, thesis research, and enduring friendships with fellow students and faculty.”
Cynthia Myntti has spent most of her professional life in or connected to the Arab world. In addition to her master’s degree from AUB, she also earned a PhD in social anthropology at the London School of Economics (1983), a master’s of public health from Johns Hopkins University (1986), and a master’s of architecture from Yale University (2004).
Between 2006 and 2016, Myntti and her husband lived in Beirut where she was the founding director of the Neighborhood Initiative and a professor of public health practice at the Faculty of Health Sciences. It was during this time that the Neighborhood Initiative published a study* documenting the tremendous multi-faceted socio-economic impact that our university has on the community that it serves.
“I have had the good fortune to study at prestigious universities, but AUB is the one Bert and I wanted to support – especially now,” Myntti explains. “I hope this fellowship will enable some American students to have the life-changing opportunity that I had.”
*Neighborhood Initiative, Analysis of AUB’s Economic Impact, 2008. https://scholarworks.aub.edu.lb/handle/10938/9786