Pre-excerpt from Forthcoming Book, In with the East Wind, Out with the West: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life (Leaver) -- Meeting Princess Muna
(Princess Muna in white, middle; Me in black, far right;
Dr. Alexa, NYIT/NY, in blue, far right;
others - members of the American Psychological Association)
I knew who she was. She knew who I was. But I had never personally met Princess Muna until the American Psychological Association came to Jordan on the quest of setting up a degree in psychology at one of the universities there. Until then, psychology was not a topic of study at any of the several universities in the country.
At the time, I was working as the chief academic officer at New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan. We also had a very small branch, computer science studies only, in Irbid, Jordan on the campus of the Jordan University of Science and Technology, which oversaw the in-country activities of NYIT.
Princess Muna (nee Tony Gardner) was/is the mother of King Abdullah. A Brit by origin, she wed King Abdullah's father, King Hussein, a much-beloved (for obvious reasons, it seemed to me) royal, one whose biography shows him to be truly larger than life. (King Abdullah has big shoes to fill.)
Princess Muna was a kind soul, one who held the interests of her adopted country (Jordan is pretty easy to adopt, in my experience) close to her heart. Among her special interests was education. At one point, she was a patron of NYIT, and many of her staff took courses and degrees there. She had been quite intrigued about the possibility of adding psychology to the degrees offered by one or another Jordanian university.
So, she was delighted to learn about1rhar 15 leading psychology scholars were planning to visit Jordan, and, yes, she would be very interested in meeting with them. The only problem? She was in Tunisia. I asked the Palace staff to send a fax from Doktora Betty, as they all called me in the Arab way, to her. When she received it, she cut her trip to Tunisia short and returned to Amman to meet with the APA delegation (seen above, with her, NYIT VPAA Dr. Alexa [I forget her last name now], and me.
Another, very important player in the NYIT Middle East campuses, which included Jordan, Bahrain (where I filled in as acting dean at times, jetting between Manama and Amman on reminiscent-of-I-Dream-of-Jeannie Gulf Air, an airline everyone I know loves), Abu Dhabi, and Egypt was the Middle East Chairman for NYIT, Dr. Mohammed Hussein.
The late Dr. Mohammed was a giant of a man -- literally. Tall and portly. And commanding. He was financially invested in the campuses and hence highly supportive, demandingly so, of their success. He was also highly demanding of loyalty (not unlike many of his Middle Eastern peers) and respect (exuding a sense of ego as tall and portly as he was physically). From a few heart-to-heart conversations we had had, academic head of Amman campus (I) and financial head of all the campuses (he), I realized that he was driven, even as a 60-year-old highly successful and nonpareil businessman, from insecurity, dating from his boyhood where his father instilled in him the idea that he was not worthy or capable of success.
So, when Dr. Mohammed learned that Princess Muna would be meeting with this visiting group, he jetted in from Egypt to be there; he certainly did not want Doktora Betty meeting with a royal without him present. (He often came to be with me when I met with Jordanian dignitaries, such as the Education Committee of Parliament; those times I needed him because my Arabic was weak, not of the educated variety but the dialectal street variety, and his was educated, rich, and precise, but this time, the meeting would be in English, and that was my language and his skills were weak.)
The palace compound is complex, far more elaborate than one can see from the road, peering through the openings in the fence. Princess Muna had her own set of offices. Her conference room was large enough but simple enough to accommodate the delegation with ease of communication.
As we filed into the conference room, Princess Muna indicated that I should sit next to her. That made sense since I was the local one and had been the one to make all the arrangements on all sides. But, the protocol to me was clear: Dr. Mohammed belonged on Princess Muna's right side and Dr. Lexa on her left. I deftly moved out of the way, and they just as deftly, without a word, moved into their seats. I sat down next to the head of the delegation.
Ah, protocol. In spite of what some folks sometimes think, protocol plays a role in these kinds of meetings and these kinds of things. An important one. When everyone knows his/her role as expected within a specific culture (or cross-cultural environment), communication is easier, negotiation is successful, and creativity is possible. We all moved a step closer that day to making a degree in psychology a possibility in Jordan.
I miss Jordan!
For more glimpses into this forthcoming book, stay tuned here.
For more posts by and about Dr. Betty Lou Leaver, click here.
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