Rawan Alsaddig was baking cookies when her neighborhood in Khartoum was bombed on Eid Al-Fitr in 2023.
“It felt like an earthquake,” she recalls. “We were being bombed, but I didn’t know from where.”
The eldest of eight, Alsaddig watched over her younger siblings as the bombardment lasted more than four hours. She called relatives abroad to say goodbye, unsure if she would survive. When the bombing stopped, she couldn’t speak for a day. Her family packed what they could carry and fled.
Nearly three years later, Alsaddig now lives in Cairo, pursuing a Master of Global Public Health at AUC, where survival turned into direction. “After that night, it was a blessing seeing my family again,” she says.
There is little written about Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s 1959 trip to Egypt. Not only did the civil rights leaders travel to Cairo, but they visited AUC to reunite with one of King’s oldest friends, James Beshai ’47, who served as a psychology instructor at AUC in the 1950s.
Their correspondence is preserved in AUC’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library and AUC: 100 Years, 100 Stories by Andrew Humphreys, tracing a friendship shaped by faith, race and global politics.
"For the many who were lucky as I was to be his friend and classmate, he is the most unforgettable man in my life.”
On a campus where routines repeat and faces become familiar fast, twins live in a constant state of mistaken identity. Lecture halls, hallways, cafés — AUC’s shared spaces become a stage for double takes, awkward waves and conversations that begin mid-sentence with the wrong person. For twins, being mixed up isn’t occasional; it’s part of daily life.
Celebrating the launch of the paperback edition of A Surgeon and a Maverick: The Life and Pioneering Work of Magdi Yacoub, AUC Press hosted a conversation between world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub and Ahmed Elghandour ’16, host of the hit YouTube series, Da7ee7. Based on an exclusive interview with AUCToday as well as insights shared during the discussion, Yacoub reflects on medicine, ethics, science and philanthropy.
How do you see the role of education in shaping not just skilled professionals, but compassionate, socially responsible individuals?
I am very optimistic because I see a lot of talent in young people. They have the right ideas, but it is absolutely essential to give them opportunities to develop and understand what the important things in life are – the real values. Education gives them a chance not only to discover their own talents — because each one has a talent — but also to talk about values, which seem to have shifted in general. People focus on making money and often miss the point: the real value of serving the community.
People focus on making money and often miss the point: the real value of serving the community.
What made you decide to publish a book?
My daughter and others wanted me to publish a book, but I initially refused to write my life story. I don’t think I’m special; I’m just performing my job. If I can do it, anybody can. I was eventually convinced because people said, “You owe it to the young generation.” A Surgeon and a Maverick was written by professional journalists, Simon Pearson and Fiona Gorman, from The Times newspaper in London. What attracted me to them was that they saw the human aspect of life.
What’s one thing people might be surprised to learn about you outside of medicine?
I enjoy farming and gardening, and particularly like growing plants, flowers, orchids and oranges. I also believe the arts are extremely important for science and medicine; research shows that people who study music or painting perform better in their work. I love listening to classical music and going to the opera.
Will AI replace doctors?
Absolutely not. AI answers questions, but humans must ask the right questions. If you ask the wrong question and get the right answer, it is a disaster. The human brain is very intricate, so you must know what you are after. Artificial intelligence can do a lot through imaging, localizing things tremendously accurately, but it is a tool and not a replacement for our brains, which are still superior.
Artificial intelligence can do a lot ... but it is a tool and not a replacement for our brains, which are still superior.
If you could send one message from the heart to young people reading your story, what would it be?
PPH: passion, persistence and humility. Find your passion and pursue it with continuity and persistence. Don’t ask everyone what to do. Be humble.
On a lush street in Maadi, Seneca Forch enters a silver shop to buy a cane. The store’s shelves shine, but a hip-height wooden rod with an embossed silver topper catches his eye. When I asked him “Why the cane?” he replied, “I have events to go to.”
Forch, indeed, has events to go to. The sharp-dressed master’s student from Columbia University, who is studying abroad at AUC for a semester, has worked with ministers as a policy adviser at the Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the United Nations and as a community relations officer at the Consulate General of Jamaica.
On his path to a career in foreign affairs, Forch decided to study abroad at AUC to explore non-Western perspectives on diplomacy. He says classes taught by former diplomats expanded his understanding of different political systems.
