Northwestern University in Qatar kicked off the new academic year with its annual Colloquium. The 2024 edition, attended by new faculty, staff, and returning community members, featured a keynote address by CEO and dean Marwan M. Kraidy, who articulated his vision for the university’s future while reinforcing its commitment to its core values.
In his speech, Dean Kraidy inspired them to view the beginning of the academic year as a moment of intentionality with a fresh perspective. He cited Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, emphasizing the significance of new beginnings in the academic environment. “I encourage all of us not to lose sight of our origins as we embark on the new academic year,” he said.
Kraidy also unveiled the school’s refined leadership structure, which he described as crucial to the university’s strategic decision-making process. The structure comprises three key councils: the Senior Leadership Council, the Academic Leadership Council, and the broader Leadership Council. “These councils have distinctive roles but work collaboratively to maintain a balanced governance structure,” Kraidy said. He highlighted the importance of this structure in sustaining the school’s mission of excellence in research, teaching, and media-making, emphasizing that shared governance is essential to the university’s success.
New initiatives include an international conference on race, spearheaded by faculty members, and another major conference focused on 50 years of Qatari media as part of the university’s Arab Information and Media Studies project. Additionally, significant scholarly activities in artificial intelligence (AI) are set to begin, further positioning NU-Q at the forefront of global academic discourse. “These are not just ceremonial; they are vital to our identity as a community of excellence,” Kraidy noted, underscoring their role in fostering a vibrant academic environment.
Kraidy also outlined his vision for NU-Q as a “community of evidence-based storytellers focused on the Global South.” This vision, he explained, captures the essence of the school’s unique identity within Northwestern University, emphasizing the intersection of diverse cultural and academic perspectives. “Our focus on the Global South articulates the diversity of our community and our commitment to producing knowledge that transcends borders,” said Kraidy, reinforcing the university’s distinctive contribution to the broader Northwestern community.
Dean Kraidy also reiterated the school’s commitment to four core values: excellence, collaboration, community, and sustainability. He emphasized that these values are interconnected and central to the university’s mission. “Our core values are distinct but connected,” said Kraidy.
“Every core value has its counterpart: excellence, tempered with humility and nourished by gratitude; collaboration, maintained by accountability and recognizing individual achievement; community, fomented by a sense that we are all individuals with preferences and aspirations, but that we nonetheless are part of something bigger than ourselves; sustainability, which stems from recognition: that every one of us needs work-life balance, that our institution needs constant care to endure, and that we are the custodians of a fragile planet.”
