Charles Habib Malik was a Lebanese academic, diplomat, philosopher, and politician.
27 Facts About Charles Malik
2.
Charles Malik served as the Lebanese representative to the United Nations, the President of the Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly, a member of the Lebanese Cabinet, a national minister of Education and the Arts, and of Foreign Affairs and Emigration, and theologian.
3.
Charles Malik participated in the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
4.
Charles Malik was the great-nephew of the renowned author Farah Antun.
5.
Charles Malik was educated at the American Mission School for Boys, now Tripoli Evangelical School for Girls and Boys in Tripoli and the American University of Beirut, where he graduated with a degree in mathematics and physics.
6.
Charles Malik moved on to Cairo in 1929, where he developed an interest in philosophy, which he proceeded to study at Harvard and in Freiburg, Germany under Martin Heidegger in 1932.
7.
Charles Malik found the policies of the Nazis unfavorable, and left soon after they came to power in 1933.
8.
Charles Malik taught there as well as at other universities in the United States.
9.
Charles Malik remained in this capacity until 1945 when he was appointed to be the Lebanese Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.
10.
Charles Malik represented Lebanon at the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations was founded.
11.
Charles Malik served as a rapporteur for the Commission on Human Rights in 1947 and 1948, when he became President of the Economic and Social Council.
12.
Charles Malik succeeded Roosevelt as the Human Rights Commission's Chair.
13.
Charles Malik remained as ambassador to the US and UN until 1955.
14.
Charles Malik was an outspoken participant in debates in the United Nations General Assembly and often criticized the Soviet Union.
15.
Charles Malik was Minister of National Education and Fine Arts in 1956 and 1957, and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1956 to 1958.
16.
Charles Malik was widely regarded as the brains of the Front, in which the other politicians were the brawn.
17.
Charles Malik was noted as a theologian who successfully reached across confessional lines, appealing to his fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Evangelicals alike.
18.
The author of numerous commentaries on the Bible and on the writings of the early Church Fathers, Charles 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.
19.
Charles Malik famously worked alongside fellow Lebanese diplomat and philosopher Karim Azkoul.
20.
Charles Malik is related to founder of postcolonialism Edward Said through marriage.
21.
At a UN session in December 1948, Charles Malik described Lebanon as follows:.
22.
Charles Malik traveled 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, University of Notre Dame.
23.
Charles Malik returned to his old chair in Philosophy at the American University of Beirut and was appointed Dean of Graduate Studies.
24.
Charles Malik has been awarded a world record of 50 honorary degrees; the originals are in his archives in Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon.
25.
Charles Malik died of complications due to kidney failure, secondary to atheroembolic disease sustained after a cardiac catheterization, performed at the Mayo Clinic two years earlier, in Beirut on 28 December 1987.
26.
Charles Malik's son, Habib Malik, is a prominent academic and a human rights activist.
27.
Charles Malik was survived by his brother, the late Father Ramzi Habib Malik, a prominent Catholic priest who worked tirelessly for the cause of Christian reconciliation with the Jewish people as well as for the belief that the Jewish People are the elder brothers of the Christians.