Shawki Farag was an accounting professor the American University in Cairo from the late 1970s through 2012, in addition to being a renowned Egyptian public intellectual, author, and columnist. He describes his upbringing and education in Cairo in the 1940s and 1950s, and life as a graduate student in the United States at Illinois in the 1960s. His return to Egypt at the time of the 1967 War and early career with the World Bank (including international posts and interaction with major figures like Robert McNamara and Sudan’s President Nimeiri) are recalled. Farag recalls joining AUC as the Management Department was developing in the early 1980s, and discusses the emergence of an accounting program and in 2009 AUC’s Accounting Department. The School of Business, Economics, and Communication and its Deans are discussed, along with management continuing education programs. Students at AUC and in the accounting program, their career paths, and the history and context of the accounting profession in Egypt are also addressed. Farag describes the downtown Tahrir Square campus and its facilities to the New Cairo campus, and comments on faculty issues such as the discrepancies in compensation and retirement age between Egyptian and foreign faculty. His research and professional activities like involvement in the creation of the Egyptian Banking Institute are covered, and he also discusses the career and role of his wife, opera singer Valerie de Casas Farag, in the creation of AUC’s music program
