Chicago Skyscrapers Stand as Counterpoint to Kennedy's Claims About Arab Achievement
The engineer behind the Willis Tower and 875 N. Michigan Avenue arrived in the U.S. in 1952 and earned two master's degrees in three years.
By Rebecca Caldwell ·
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, said this month that 500 million Arabs worldwide produce no science, no Nobel Prize winners, no Fields Prize winners, no Wolf Prize winners and no literature. The statement arrived as Muslim candidates campaign ahead of Tuesday's election, including Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan.
Kennedy's account does not hold up against the record. Three Muslims have received the Fields Medal, which is awarded in mathematics, and several have received Wolf Prizes. The term Arab also reaches beyond the Muslim population: Arab Christians and Arab Jews exist as well.
Chicago offers its own example. Fazlur Rahman Khan, who worked with architect Bruce Graham at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, did the design work on the former Hancock Building at 875 N. Michigan Avenue and on the Willis Tower. He grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where no building exceeded three stories, and first saw a skyscraper at age 21. He entered the University of Illinois in 1952 and completed two master's degrees in three years, one in structural engineering and another in theoretical and applied mechanics.
At the time, skyscraper height was capped by the weight of steel beams. Khan drew on hollow bamboo from his homeland to devise a tubular system, which enabled the Sears Tower to reach 110 stories. He also pushed Skidmore to buy an expensive mainframe computer for computer-aided design work. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named a lifetime achievement medal after him in 2004, 22 years after his death at age 52 in 1982; Khan never received it.
The Kennedy remarks also conflate two different categories. Arab names an ethnic identity, while Muslim names a religious one. H.L. Mencken recorded arab as a slur for Jews in his book The American Language.
Kennedy's record on vaccines and public health has drawn criticism from medical professionals, and his comments come as Muslim candidates campaign ahead of Tuesday's election.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
