November 1989, Page 21

Personality

Faris Bouhafa

By Roger Gaess

Faris Bouhafa, director of media and public relations for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) savors being asked what he was doing prior to entering the Washington political scene.

"People expect me to rattle off the list of degrees that I got and books and papers that I've written, and a job resume that has 'Middle East' written all over it," he says. "When I just simply tell them I was involved in rock 'n roll, I enjoy seeing their reaction."

The transition, in fact, makes sense. "I've always been involved in turning people on to something new and meaningful," Faris explains. "I believed in most of the recording artists I worked with-Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs. They had something serious to contribute to art, or to art and politics, or to the development of popular music."

In March 1986, when he came to ADC, Faris applied the promotional and media relations skills he had developed in the world of music. "If you want to let the American public know that there are Arab-Americans in this country who are organized, who are concerned about specific issues," he stresses, "you have to get to the American media first and make them the transmitters of your message."

Following in Father's Footsteps

Faris, born in New York City, of an Irish-American mother, learned much of his trade by watching his father, an exiled Tunisian journalist who headed the Committee for the Freedom of North Africa, a one-man lobby working to garner US support for Tunisian, African and Moroccan nationalism. American newspapers readily quoted from his father's press releases, teaching Faris early that "one person can move mountains if he knows how to do it and persists."

After Tunisia obtained its independence from France, the Bouhafa family relocated to Tunis, where Faris lived for six years. He returned to New York in 1965 to major in political science at Colombia University. As an activist at Colombia who worked in the anti-war movement and the poor peoples' campaign, Faris found that he could raise fairly substantial sums of money by putting on benefit concerts. Like many others of his generation, he saw music as a mechanism for social change, and he decided that after college he would get himself into the music business and "find all the other Bob Dylans of the world."

When he sent out his resume to record companies after graduation, however, he discovered that his degree from Colombia did not provide an automatic entree. Executives in the music business were more interested in people who had "street smarts" than people with degrees. So he took a menial job at Max's Kansas City, then the foremost showcase club in New York. It was also, Faris found, where the record company people who had not replied to his resumes went at night to relax.

One thing led to another and he ended up running the whole operation at Max's for two years. From there he moved on to CBS Records, where, among other things, he assisted in the producation of Bob Dylan's "Desire" album. A few years later he set up his own company to manage artists.

All along Faris had followed Arab issues closely "and had been especially struck by the Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis." But there was no upside to talking about Palestinian human rights in the music business, so he ended up "putting aside my views on the Middle East."

While browsing in a bookstore near the United Nations one day, he came across a book edited by Edmund Ghareeb, a Lebanese-American who teaches journalism at the American University in Washington, DC, that examined the media perceptions of Arabs. "What ran through Split Vision," Faris recalls, "was the need for some public relations savvy on the part of Arab governments and Arab-American organizations to turn things around in terms of image. What struck me was that there weren't any full-time media professionals working in Washington in that field. It was kind of hit or miss."

Moving to Washington

Impressed with the book, he dropped Ghareeb a kind of fan letter, with a resume enclosed. Ghareeb arranged for Faris to meet with former Senator James Abourezk, the founder and chairman of ADC. The meeting took place at Kennedy airport, where Abourezk had a three-hour layover, and a few months later, Faris was in Washington "for good" in a newly created position.

Faris' first months at ADC were made a little easier by the Reagan administration. The bombing of Libya simplified his making contact with the media; the media called him. On one day alone Faris gave over 50 TV, radio and press interviews.

Accomplishments at ADC

Numerous accomplishments during his tenure include making public the infamous "Kissinger memo" calling for press restriction by Israel, organizing the first national DC media seminar, and negotiating the suspension of US teargas shipments to Israel. But he is particularly proud of a 1987 agreement reached between Elektra records and ADC over the song "Killing an Arab." It is, in his words, "the model of positive conflict resolution between an ethnic group and an American corporate entity."

It was clear from the outset that the song, performed by the popular English group The Cure and inspired by an Albert Camus novel, was not inherently anti-Arab, Faris, however, was concerned that it "could be misused and easily misinterpreted and could somehow reinforce negative stereotypes that already existed." When a New Jersey disk jockey introduced it as a "song about killing A-rabs" that fear was realized.

An ADC phone campaign then prompted a long-sought meeting with Elektra. The ADC, on principle, declined to advocate the censorship of art. The record company agreed to put a sticker disclaiming racist intent on every product containing the song. The Cure, themselves outraged by the song's misuse, insisted on doing a benefit concert which raised $40,000 for Palestinian and Lebanese orphans and the Catholic Charities of New York. "Everybody came out looking good," Faris notes.

Changing Attitudes towards Arab-Americans

Faris believes that Arab-American concerns are better understood and accepted today in American society. He also sees indications, aided in part by the intifada, that the trend is away from negative stereotyping of Palestinians and other Arabs on television and in movies. And he now rarely hears a "pregnant pause" when he introduces himself by phone to a journalist. That absence of silence is music to his ears.

Roger Gaess is a New York-based free-lance journalist.