The proposed study addresses the inter-subjective identity of the American academic institutions in the Arab World, especially the American University in Cairo and the American University of Beirut, and how it was negotiated among various players with various, sometimes harmonic, sometimes contrapuntal, and sometimes dissonant, intentions and stances, and how the identity was/is transformed through a socialization process (making use of constructivist and post-structuralist theories). To address this question, this study would make use of the literature on the missionary/colonial initial mission for these institutions and how it took various forms throughout the course of its history. Also it would make use of secondary literature on activism in American universities, including the most recent Campus at War. Nevertheless, this literature is to be complimented with a first hand study of the student publications and activist experiences, including my own. This inquiry also addresses, on the other side of the spectrum, the various 'gating' techniques in both universities, including the recent 'migration' of AUC campus from the center of the city to the peripheral desert, and what this gating means with regards to student activism, surveillance and control techniques, and the projected identity of the two institutions. In the above mentioned effort, this study attempts to study the linkages and/or tensions between various visions and perceptions for the roles and identities of the American universities in the area, and how the academic and physical settings, the form of education, and the student activism negotiate these roles, form or resolve tensions, and achieve linkages or disjunctions with one another.