While Lebanon's civil war officially ended 30 years ago, the country still has yet to systematically and unequivocally reckon with its tumultuous past and settle issues that continue to impact and drive contemporary Lebanese problems. Although the roots of many of today's problems can be traced back to the unsettled scores and open wounds of the war era, the country has shied away from discussions about the past under the flawed notion that doing so would cause the tenuous sectarian peace to collapse. This faulty belief has become even more pronounced – and detrimental – in light of the escalation of conflict in neighboring Syria. By perpetually turning a blind eye to the events of yesterday, Lebanon continues to place its future on a precarious foundation.

Since its inception in 2005, UMAM D&R has closely monitored domestic and regional events while concurrently observing the lack of social-political discourse about Lebanon's past. Recognizing that such willful ignorance and faux amnesia only serves to perpetuate the very problems Lebanon seeks avoid, documentation and research are the primary tools of choice used by UMAM D&R to promote a "dealing with the past" agenda that will hopefully translate into public policies. These tools have proved effective, however, the heightened problems of recent years have created an exigent need for increased efforts and imaginative solutions—by both the state and its people. Thus, in seeking to help with the latter by focusing on the former, UMAM D&R launched "Connecting the Dots: Assessing the Past by Addressing the Present."

While Lebanon's civil war officially ended 30 years ago, the country still has yet to systematically and unequivocally reckon with its tumultuous past and settle issues that continue to impact and drive contemporary Lebanese problems. Although the roots of many of today's problems can be traced back to the unsettled scores and open wounds of the war era, the country has shied away from discussions about the past under the flawed notion that doing so would cause the tenuous sectarian peace to collapse. This faulty belief has become even more pronounced – and detrimental – in light of the escalation of conflict in neighboring Syria. By perpetually turning a blind eye to the events of yesterday, Lebanon continues to place its future on a precarious foundation.

Since its inception in 2005, UMAM D&R has closely monitored domestic and regional events while concurrently observing the lack of social-political discourse about Lebanon's past. Recognizing that such willful ignorance and faux amnesia only serves to perpetuate the very problems Lebanon seeks avoid, documentation and research are the primary tools of choice used by UMAM D&R to promote a "dealing with the past" agenda that will hopefully translate into public policies. These tools have proved effective, however, the heightened problems of recent years have created an exigent need for increased efforts and imaginative solutions—by both the state and its people. Thus, in seeking to help with the latter by focusing on the former, UMAM D&R launched "Connecting the Dots: Assessing the Past by Addressing the Present."

The new initiative is not a shift to new methods for UMAM D&R but rather a doubling down on what it already does and a refinement of its focus on documentation to more effectively operate in the current landscape. "Connecting the Dots" can be broken down into three primary facets: documentation and archival work, publication, and community outreach. Under the initiative, documents and collections continue to be acquired by UMAM D&R, but of equal importance, they are being uploaded onto two online databases: UMAM Biblio, a new catalogue raisonné of UMAM D&R’s holdings, and Memory at Work, a documentation platform centrally dedicated to chronicling the Lebanese civil war and civil peace efforts. The websites reflect the modern state of online activity and attempt to streamline research amongst concerned parties.

Recognizing that certain documents or collections deserve more attention than others, the initiative seeks to publish documents that stand the greatest chance of connecting the dots between past and present, allowing a clear nexus to be formed for all to discuss. And so, after Lebanese parliament passed Law 105 in November 2018 to deal with the civil war legacy, UMAM D&R published that law in English and Arabic along with footnotes.

Finally, "Connecting the Dots" pumped new life into The Hangar, UMAM D&R’s exhibition space in southern Beirut. Drawing lines between the events of yesterday and today occurs through a myriad of ways and community outreach is one such avenue. After a few years of closure to the public while the space was being used for a film shoot, The Hangar was brought back into the programmatic fold with Lebanon 1920-2020: How Might We Commemorate this Centennial? Given that Lebanon’s conflict-loaded past involves the entire country and not just Beirut, some exhibitions like TripoliScope have been mobilized to reached new audiences, such as in Tripoli.

Dealing with the present runs parallel to dealing with the past, yet Lebanon still seems unwilling or unable to accept this idea and move forward on stable footing. To ignore the open wounds lingering from the civil war era is tantamount to creating new fissures to divide the country and throw off the dubious peace. Hence, UMAM D&R launched "Connecting the Dots: Assessing the Past by Addressing the Present" to leverage its wealth of resources and documentation to refine its approach and be more effective in the strained landscape that Lebanon sits today.