Campus and city
AUB's Ras Beirut campus is one of the most storied in the Middle East — a green, historic seafront campus that has long anchored a cosmopolitan, intellectually vibrant student community drawing from across the Arab world (~19% international). That heritage now coexists with severe national crisis: Lebanon's economic collapse means the public grid supplies only about an hour of electricity a day, so the campus and city run on generators amid recurring fuel and supply shortages; the currency has lost over 98% of its value; and Beirut sees periodic political instability and unrest, with the trauma of the August 2020 port explosion that damaged the campus still recent. Student life remains rich in community, activism and tradition, but it is genuinely shaped by the realities of studying in a country in deep crisis.