Dr. Malik Signature
Born in
Bterram,
Lebanon, Malik was the son of
Dr. Habib Malik and Zarifa Karam. He was
educated at the
American Mission School for Boys
in
Tripoli and the
American University of Beirut,
where he graduated with a degree in
mathematics and physics.
He moved
on to
Cairo in
1929, where he developed an
interest in philosophy, which he
proceeded to study at
Harvard (under
Alfred North Whitehead) and
in
Freiberg,
Germany (under
Martin Heidegger in
1932. His stay in Germany,
however, was short-lived. He found the
policies of the
Nazis unfavorable, and left
soon after they came to power in
1933. In
1937, he received his
Ph.D. in philosophy (based on
the metaphysics in the philosophies of
Whitehead and Heidegger) from
Harvard University. He taught
there as well as at other universities
in the United States.
After
returning to Lebanon, Malik founded the
Philosophy department at the American
University, as well as a cultural
studies program. He remained in this
capacity until
1945 when he was appointed to
be the Lebanese ambassador to the
United States and the
United Nations.
Malik
represented Lebanon at the
San Francisco conference at
which the United Nations was founded. He
served as a rapporteur for the
Commission on Human Rights in
1947 and
1948, when he became
President of the
Economic and Social Council.
The same year, he helped to draft the
United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
He remained as ambassador to the US and
UN until
1955. He was an outspoken
participant in debates in the
United Nations General Assembly
and often criticized the
Soviet Union. After a
three-year absence, he returned in
1958 to preside over the
thirteenth session of the
United Nations General Assembly.
Meanwhile, Malik had been appointed to
the Lebanese Cabinet. He was Minister of
National Education and Fine Arts in
1956 and
1957, and
Minister of Foreign Affairs
from
1956 to
1958. While a Minister, he
was elected to the
National Assembly in
1957, and served there for
three years.
Malik
returned to his academic career in
1960. He travelled
extensively, lectured on human rights
and other subjects, and held
professorships at a number of American
universities including Harvard, the
American University in
Washington, DC,
Dartmouth College (New
Hampshire),
University of Notre Dame (Indiana).
In
1981, he was also a
Pascal Lecturer at the
University of Waterloo in
Canada. His last official
post was with
The Catholic University of America
(Washington, DC), where he served as a
Jacques Maritain
Distinguished Professor of Moral and
Political Philosophy from
1981 to
1983. Meanwhile, he had also
returned to his old chair in Philosophy
at the American University of Beirut (1962
to
1976).
Following
the outbreak of the
Lebanese Civil War, which
raged from
1975 to
1990, Malik helped to found
the
Front for Freedom and Man in Lebanon,
to defend the Christian cause. It was
later renamed the
Lebanese Front, who included
Phalangist Party founder
Pierre Gemayel and former
President and
National Liberal Party leader
Camille Chamoun.
Malik was
also noted as a theologian who
successfully reached across confessional
lines, appealing to his fellow
Eastern Orthodox Christians,
Roman Catholics, and
Evangelicals alike. The
author of numerous commentaries on the
Bible and on the writings of
the early
Church Fathers, Malik was one
of the few Orthodox theologians of his
time to be widely known in Evangelical
circles, and the evangelical leader
Bill Bright spoke well of him
and quoted him. Partly owing to Malik's
ecumenical appeal, as well as to his
academic credentials, he served as
President of the
World Council on Christian Education
from
1967 to
1971, and as Vice-President
of the
United Bible Societies from
1966 to
1972.
Malik
died of cancer in Beirut on
28 December
1987. His son,
Habib Malik, is a prominent
academic and human rights activist. He
was also survived by his brother, the
late Father Ramzi Habib Malik, a
prominent Catholic priest.
**********
Charles
Malik played a vital role in shaping the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Rapporteur of the Commission on Human
Rights, Malik's fellow delegates
credited him as the driving force behind
the document’s arrangement. He was
commended by U.S. State Department aids
to Eleanor Roosevelt for being jointly
responsible, along with Mrs. Roosevelt,
for the document’s adoption.
A strong
advocate of the "natural law" approach
to defining human rights, Malik believed
the UDHR to be more than a document of
morally persuasive worth. Like many
other representatives on the Commission
he understood that the Declaration would
be immediately followed by a specific,
legally binding treaty.
Still, he
was hesitant to regard the Declaration
as simply a proclamation of human
rights. He believed it to be far more
significant than that. In Paris, upon
adoption of the Declaration, Malik said
that, Whoever values man and his
individual freedom above everything else
cannot fail to find in the present
Declaration a potent ideological weapon.
If wielded in complete goodwill,
sincerity, and truth, this weapon can
prove most significant in the history of
the spirit.
Malik’s
role in safeguarding international human
rights was not confined to his position
as Rapporteur within the Commission. He
was also President of the Economic and
Social Council and Chairman of the Third
Committee in 1948 while the UDHR was
being deliberated. Upon Eleanor
Roosevelt’s retirement as Chair of the
Commission on Human Rights in 1951,
Charles Malik was chosen as her
successor.
***********
Articles , Works And Books by: Dr.
Charles Malik
(1949) "The Challenge of Human Rights",
Behind the Headlines (vol. 9, no. 6,
Toronto)
(1949) War and Peace (Stamford, CT:
Overbrook Press)
(1950) "The Challenge of Communism",
Chicago Council on Foreign Relations
(1951) The Problem of Asia (Stamford, CN:
Overbrook Press)
(1955) The Problem of Coexistence
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern Uni-versity
Press)
(1958) "Introduction", in Philip W.
Thayer (ed.), Tensions in the Middle
East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press)
(1960) Will the Future Redeem the Past?
Address delivered at
eighteenth-century capitol,
Williamsburg, Virginia, 11 June 1960
(1960) "The Legacy of Imperialism"
(article written with Barbara Ward,
Thomas P. Whitney and Robert
Strrrausz-Hupe) (Chatham College, NA)
(1962) Christ and Crisis (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
(1962) Selection in John N. Brooks (ed.)
The One and the Many: The Individual in
the Modern World (New York: Harper &
Row)
(1962) (with Eugene Carson Blake, Andrew
Cordier, John Karefa-Smart, Lin Yutang,
Henry Margenau, and Robert Wilson)
Christian Perspectives in Contemporary
Culture: The Proceedings of the Hanover
College Institute, 8-11 March 1960 (Twayne
Publishers)
(1963) Man in the Struggle for Peace
(New York: Harper & Row)
(1965) Contributor to John Courtney
Murray (ed.) Freedom and Man (Kenedy)
(1967) (ed.) God and Man in Contemporary
Islamic Thought (Beirut: American
University of Beirut)
(1968) Selection in O. Frederick Nolde,
Free and Equal: Human
Rights in Ecumenical Perspective
(Geneva: World Council of Churches)
(1970) God and Man in Contemporary
Christian Thought (Beirut:
American University of Beirut Centennial
Publications)
(1972) Survival in an Age of Revolution
(Atlanta, GA: Coca-Cola Company)
(1973) Sharl Malik wa-al-qadiyah al-Filastiniyah
(Beirut: Mu"assasat
A. Badran)
(1974) The Wonder of Being (Waco: Word
Books)
(1974) Lubnan fi dhatihi (Beirut:
Mu"assasat A. Badran)
(1977) Almuqaddimah
(1981) A Christian Critique of the
University (lntervarsity Press)
(1998) Charles Malik: Dowr Lubnan fi
Sana' al-I"lanal-"Alami li-Haquq al-Insan
(Beirut: Nowfal)