Peter Kilburn

Peter Kilburn

Peter Kilburn was a man of well-considered convictions and with a sense of values. Like so many of his colleagues at the American University of Beirut (AUB), he daily risked his life for those values. I came to know Peter well at the AUB. He was Acquisition Librarian, a massive job in a library used by scholars from all over the world and by the University's 4,500 students and faculty members. This was a research institution continually working on the cutting edge of new ideas.

The main building, the Janet Memorial Library, was situated at the center of the beautiful AUB campus on a hillside sweeping down to the Mediterranean. It was a donation from an alumnus in Brazil, and it housed the major part of a collection of 334,000 volumes and 4,850 periodicals. Peter was convinced, as am I and many others, that the American University of Beirut is a powerful tool for peace, made even more valuable each year by the human tragedy of death and destruction that occurs just outside its walls. The University's educational program, the result of 120 years of service by Americans, Arabs, and scholars of many other nationalities was, in Peter's view, well worth the risks.

He was that kind of man:...