Impact Stories

“The key to a better life for our family,” explains alumnus Said Hitti (BA Philosophy 1957), “was education.” The Hittis had successful careers in education and medicine. Four of them, Habib Hitti, Philip Hitti, Yusuf Hitti, and Nuha Hitti (all mentioned below) taught at the American University of Beirut.

Said’s father (Habib Said Hitti, BA 1907) and four of his cousins (Philip Hitti, BA 1908, who became a world-renowned historian of the Arab world; Najib Hitti, BA 1911; Fouad Hitti, BA 1914; and Yusuf Hitti, MD 1917) were the first in the family to attend the Syrian Protestant College, as the American University of Beirut was known until 1920. They all needed – and received – financial assistance. In his self-published memoir, The Unforgettable Figs of Shemlan – and other anecdotes (2021), Said describes how the five cousins worked together to minimize the cost of their university education. “One of them would attend a course in history, another Arabic literature and a third would study math. Then they would teach each other what they had learned, take a qualifying test at the university, and receive credits towards their degree.” Said’s sisters, Suheila (BA Commerce 1950) and Nuha (BSN 1952), were the first women in the family to graduate from AUB. “The Hittis were not revolutionaries,” says Said, “rather they climbed their way up through education. They were eminently successful.”

The expectation when he was growing up was that Said would become a teacher in Souk-el-Gharab – as his father had been. After spending a couple of years at his father’s school, he transferred to International College (IC). After graduation, he enrolled at AUB. Said remembers his time at AUB very fondly, describing it as “a mind-opening experience,” not just in terms of the education he received, but culturally as well. He is especially grateful for the liberal education that he received, which he says laid an important foundation for the rest of his life.  (You can see Said in the photo above, third from the right, with some of the people who made AUB such a mind-opening experience: Fouad Haddad, Professor Bertrand, Rashid Fawwaz, Yale Professor Ralph Turner, Professor Puccetti, Assad Razzouk, and Sadek al-Azm.)

Said went on to earn degrees at the London School of Economics (BS Economics 1961), where he met his late wife Angela in 1958, and St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University (B. Litt. 1967). While at Oxford in the early 1960s, Said and Angela became friends with Malcolm Kerr, who was AUB president from March 1982 until his assassination on January 18, 1984, and his wife, Ann Kerr-Adam, who is a trustee emerita of the university.

In 1963, Said joined the International Monetary Fund where he served in the Middle Eastern Department for 32 years. He led economic review teams to many countries in the region. Throughout this period, he stayed in touch with AUB – and with Lebanon. Although he has not been back since 2011, he feels a strong connection to his alma mater. To honor the memory of Angela, who died in 2019, Said made a gift to AUB in fall 2021 to establish the Said and Angela Hitti Endowed Scholarship. “I have had a good life and wanted to give back,” he says.

“We are deeply grateful to Said and his family for their commitment to help those less fortunate during the current very challenging circumstances,” said Associate Vice President for Advancement Patrick O’Connell.