Middle-Eastern Americans support School of Medicine

More than 400 guests were entertained and honored at an event called One Thousand and One Nights, which transformed the Grosse Pointe Academy in Grosse Pointe Farms into a Bedouin fantasy. For the second consecutive year, a committee of prominent metropolitan Detroit Arab- and Chaldean-American physicians and their families hosted this gala event to benefit the ibn Sina Endowed Scholarship Fund at the Wayne State University (WSU) School of Medicine.

Committee chairs, Dr. and Mrs. Bashar Succar of Bloomfield Hills, presented guests with an evening of authentic cultural ambiance featuring traditional cuisine, music, dancing, and a fashion show of antique regional costumes from a private collection.

Governor and Mrs. John Engler, Senator and Mrs. Spencer Abraham, Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido, and Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Nasser joined Dr. Robert Sokol and Mrs. Sokol as honorary chairs.

With the help of this event, $200,000 was raised to fund the ibn Sina Endowed Scholarship, which will assist WSU medical students with the substantial cost of education. This fund was also created to honor the legacy of ibn Sina, the ancient Arabic scholar whose major work, The Canon, was the primary medical textbook in European and Middle-Eastern universities from the fifth to the 12th centuries.