satisfying end to the administrative year

This year was my first time ever in control of a multi-million dollar budget, but somehow, in a year of Revolution and deficits, this office turned a surplus. We did it by being tougher on marginal requests, by tightening a few screws, and by being as efficient as possible.

And nonetheless, we still have far and away the most generous internal grants program for faculty and graduate students that I have ever seen. This is one of the very best features of the American University in Cairo. When I arrived to start this job in Fall 2000, I had a grand total of zero academic publications– not even a tiny book review anywhere. By now I have quite a lot of academic publications, and a great number of them are due largely or entirely to the unbelievable generosity of this university towards its faculty. In some ways I’m the poster boy for this internal grants program, so I guess it’s appropriate that I now run the whole thing.

What sorts of things can you do with this program? Well, if you have a good idea for a book manuscript, you can get $6,500 to go somewhere for a month and work on it. And you can do that each and every year as long as you’re producing something and not just frittering the money away without result. This is another reason I learned to write books so quickly, I suppose. There was always a big chunk of grant money available for the next one, as long as I was moving forward. Every book from Guerrilla Metaphysics onward has been partially or wholly funded by AUC. [ADDENDUM: This links to one of my favorite themes. As an intellectual you should not be an aloof cogito in sourpussed alienation from accidental circumstance. Instead, you need to figure out what the advantages of your accidental circumstances are and make the very best of them. Some people come to Egypt and whine the whole time about how far away they are from the elite centers of Western learning and complain that they deserved better. I learned to be an optimist about being here and focus only on the good things. Which is why I’m happy with this job.]

So, if there’s a job opening here next year in your field and you don’t apply, you’re being foolish. This is a fantastically interesting and supportive environment, and now Egypt is politically one of the world’s most intriguing places as well.