Adham Center Founder Sheikh Kamal Adham Remembered

DEC 15, 1999 Sheikh Kamal Adham, political and intelligence advisor to two Saudi Kings, outstanding Saudi businessman, a member of the AUC Board of Trustees, and benefactor of the Adham Center for Television Journalism passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early morning hours of October 29, 1999.

Approximately 40 days later AUC President Dr. John Gerhart convened a commemorative gathering on campus in the Harmon Room, Hill House in the presence of Sheikh Kamal’s son Sultan, who now directs Adham Industries operations in Egypt; the attorney and family member Gamal Adham; and Dr. Hamdi el Tahri, who represented Sheikh Kamal in Egypt and headed the Sheikh’s office in Cairo.

Also present were Dr. Earl (Tim) Sullivan, AUC Provost; Dr. Muhammed Ali Sharqawi, Vice President for New Campus Development; Mr. William Todd Jr., Vice President for Institutional Advancement; Prof. S. Abdallah Schleifer, director of the Adham Center and Distinguished Lecturer in Mass Communication; Prof. Shems Friedlander, Senior Lecturer in Mass Communication and closely associated with the Adham Center as Creative Director of the electronic journal Transnational Broadcasting Studies (TBS) published by the Center and as chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Center’s Sony Gallery for Photography; Dr. Hussein Amin, Senior Associate of the Adham Center and director of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Graduate Program; Ms. Sarah Sullivan, Managing Editor of TBS; Ms. Rowaida Saad El Din, Senior Assistant to President Gerhart and Coordinator of AUC’s Internship Program; and Ms. Soheir M. Fouad, Assistant to the Director of the Adham Center.

The commemoration began with a recitation of Quran and ended with those present reciting al-Fatiha for Sheikh Kamal.

President Gerhart and other AUC administrators recalled Sheikh Kamal’s major role on the Board of Trustees, providing moral as well as financial support to the university. Sheikh Sultan thanked the president for this expression of the university’s appreciation and said that he and his brothers would continue in the footsteps of their father, in honor of his memory.

Adham Center Director Abdallah Schleifer then delivered the following eulogy:

“Sheikh Kamal Adham is now part of that history of the Arab world in the 20th century that he quietly did so much to shape. His role in history was discreet, not simply because he practiced the quintessence of behind-the-scenes politics reflected by the rare number of photos of the Sheikh that exist in public domain, but also because he was above all else an intrinsically modest man.

“The only time I ever felt he was upset with me was when Adham Center student-generated footage of the Sheikh participating in our opening ceremony appeared years later, quite mysteriously, in a British Television feature on the BCC affair. I had to intuit Sheikh Kamal was upset because his voice did not rise when he asked me how the producers of the British documentary had secured the footage, nor were there any other obvious signs of anger or disappointment. For he was also a quiet man, who commanded by virtue of a moral authority.

“It is perhaps not appropriate for the director the Adham Center to dwell much more on his public role except to note that all of the trends in Egyptian society for the past two decades—an open door for debate as well as imports and investments, the stirring of civil society, the reduction of the role of security services in ordering intellectual life, and the recovery of Sinai—in the end were largely possible because of the alliance Sheikh Kamal helped forge between two great men I was fortunate enough, as a journalist, also to have known in an earlier pre-AUC time: President Anwar el-Sadat and Malak Faisal Al Saud Bin Abdul Aziz.

“At the time Sheikh Kamal inaugurated our center the Infitah was raging in the occupied Palestinian territories, and he told the students and distinguished guests assembled for the occasion that when such cruelty and injustice exists as witnessed in the occupation and the repression of opposition to the occupation, then it is the media which is the sole hope that the cause of the weak will be heard. And he said that he could only hope that the graduates of our center, as future television journalists, would fulfill such a mission. I recall how one of my colleagues here at AUC in the Department of Political Science, who shared the conventional left-wing perception of Sheikh Kamal, was deeply moved at the time by Sheikh Kamal’s remarks and the obvious sincerity animating his words.

“Sheikh Kamal was a truly modest man. With all due respect to our Vice President for Institutional Advancement, the statistics issued by your department have never told the whole story.

“Above and beyond the Sheikh’s annual donation to the Adham Center, which included the provision of total support for the electronic journal TBS (Transnational Broadcasting Studies), the Sheikh was always there to help out in an emergency: to subsidize annual extended lecture tours abroad by center faculty when university funding would not cover the real costs; to provide the center with a van to take students off campus for field reporting; to cover the cost of our annual in-house bulletin In Focus, which reports on the accomplishments of the center—its students, faculty, and above all, its alumni.

“In the early years the Sheikh would attend our annual awards dinner, and in the later years he would always delegate Dr. Hamdi el-Tahri to present every graduate with a personal present, almost always an elegant watch. This year he was planning to have his watch factory design and manufacture a watch with an Adham Center logo on it specifically for this purpose. And of course, the annual awards dinner itself was funded directly by the Sheikh. Most of these gifts were never reflected in any official university statistics.

“But for me, nothing more reflects his far-sightedness, his visionary nature, his ability to provide moral as well as financial support than the very concept that inspired TBS. Back in the earliest years we published an annual bulletin, called “The Bulletin of the Adham Center,” edited by the Adham Center intern. It eventually disappeared because we lacked the staff to continue publishing once the intern’s slot was traded off for a curator for the Sony Gallery—an Adham Center activity the Sheikh was very proud of.

“At that time when we published and he paid for this annual bulletin, he said to me, quite casually, ‘You know, Abdallah, this bulletin is all well and good. But I believe the center has something to give to the world beyond it that is more than just talk about itself. I believe that the center is the point where Arab television encounters global television, where academic studies encounter professional practice. The Adham Center is a center for dialogue as well as training, and the papers that you and Dr. Amin give at conferences reflect that reality. Your publication should reflect it.’

“At the time I simply argued that I couldn’t mix discourse with in-house reporting. But his words, said so casually, quietly haunted me, and within a few years when satellite television turned around this region's perception of what television, and particularly television journalism, is and can do, I realized that he was right and we owed it to our unique position to do something about it. When I took the proposal for a biannual electronic journal to the Sheikh, he did not say ‘I told you so’ or ‘It’s about time.’ He simply agreed to write an additional check to this university to cover what was needed.

"I am overwhelmed by one thought. Sheikh Kamal Adham built many businesses and institutions and supported many good causes. But for all of that, there is only one institution in this world that bears his name. The Adham Center for Television Journalism. I tremble at the responsibility and I pledge to God and his memory that we will be worthy of that trust.”

Abdallah Schleifer