Serageldin gave the concluding address to the Knowledge Society Symposium, in which he effectively summarized the proceedings of two full days in an eloquent 30-minute statement. He left the eminent participants inspired to pursue the challenges that they had been discussing over the course of a two-day international symposium on Building a Knowledge Society in the Arab World. The symposium organized by the AUC and the BA and attended by some 60 distinguished individuals from education, government, and civil society institutions, marked the start of an on-going long-term process, said Serageldin. The event also featured remarks by Dr. Ahmed Zewail, who delivered a magisterial lecture the evening before. The two-day affair addressed issues such as the role of higher education in development, the contributions of the sciences and R&D, and the societal dimensions of knowledge-based development.