When she comes to Salt Lake City later this month, Barbara Ibrahim will talk about the next generation of Arab philanthropists. She'll talk about the way Muslims used to live out their faith, generations ago. She'll talk about new ways of giving that are just now becoming available.
Ibrahim, who is senior adviser to the provost at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, will speak at the University of Utah as part of a Tanner Humanities Center Symposium.
The Symposium is titled "Democracy and Diversity: The Role of the University in the 21st Century." Her talk will be Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 1:30 p.m. at the Fort Douglas Officer's Club. It is called, "Civic Engagement and Philanthropy: The Role of Universities in the Arab World."
In a phone interview from her home in Cairo, Ibrahim said, "The problem in our region has been that traditional forms of philanthropy have all been nationalized." State officials were hungry for property. Bureaucracies took over and became corrupt, in some cases, she said.
Meanwhile, religious societies have been unable to meet the needs of the poor and unemployed and undereducated. And Westerners have become suspicious of some of the organizations, which doesn't add to their effectiveness.
Ibrahim's dream, and the dream of other university leaders, is to see universities step in to teach young people how to give. The students who are going to be the next leaders need to be taught how to set up philanthropic foundations, Ibrahim explains. To set up a foundation, you have to know how to form a board of directors, how to invest, how to develop programs.
"There is whole range of things you have to know," Ibrahim said. She knows them, for the most part. She's worked for the Ford Foundation as well as for The Population Council in Egypt.
Ibrahim was born in the United States, educated and trained as a social worker, and moved to Egypt shortly after she got her doctorate. She has since become an Egyptian national, reared her children as Egyptians and has an Egyptian husband. (In fact, her husband, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, will give the keynote address at the Tanner symposium. He'll talk about the role of universities in emerging democracies.)
Ibrahim sees herself as a person who can bridge two cultures. She thinks she's in the right spot, at American University, the country's premier private liberal arts college. The American University plans to launch a philanthropic foundation next January — with Ibrahim as its director.
Ibrahim sees young people in Lebanon demonstrating in the streets. She sees them in Egypt, too, demanding a greater role in their society. Not just Muslims, but Christians and Jews, too — all Arabs, in fact — seem to her to be poised for greater involvement. So, she thinks the time is right for young people to form nongovernmental, multi-religious, do-good foundations.
Ibrahim also knows that Arabs resent Westerners coming in to run clinics and set up food banks. But as long as there is a void in the local community, she notes, it will be filled from the outside.
She believes there are many wealthy Arabs, perhaps even Muslims from other countries, who would like to give to a private endowment — if they could be assured that it would not be taken over by the state. So, the first task for her university will be to try to establish a new relationship between the state and private foundations.
Actually, she notes, a son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has just set up a private philanthropy. "So, it seems like a time in which a number of people are willing to think about this seriously."
In medieval Cairo, Ibrahim says, people lived out their faith in their daily lives. Wealthy people always set up endowments. They built hospitals and orphanages. Even the drinking fountains on the street were endowments, Ibrahim says.
But now that the government has taken over, now that there is a "Ministry of Endowments," people think twice about giving. Ibrahim says they still want to give, they still feel the moral imperative to share. They just don't want to give to the government.
E-mail: susan@desnews.com