About

I am an engineer by training, an educator by vocation, and a lifelong explorer of the human mind. My journey into human cognition began not in a psychology department, but in the lecture halls of an engineering school in the late 1970s. As a student of civil engineering at the University of Damascus, I spent my days solving technical problems—but my nights were often reserved for a different kind of inquiry. Each week, I picked up a new book, and one day I came across a title that would change everything: Know Yourself: Psychological Studies by Prof. Fakher Aakel.

That book opened a door inward. It invited me to examine thought itself, to reflect on emotion, identity, and awareness. Soon after, I discovered Man, The Unknown by Alexis Carrel, a Noble Prize laureate and from there, the path unfolded. I began what would become a lifelong pursuit: the exploration of cognition, metacognition, and self-awareness.

In 1984, I arrived in Ann Arbor to pursue graduate studies at the University of Michigan, a renowned institution not just for its engineering, but for its culture of interdisciplinary thought. While my academic work focused on courses in civil engineering and applied mechanics, my intellectual curiosity continued to wander purposefully into psychology, linguistics, and philosophy.

There, I delved into Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Carl Jung’s works on Analytical Psychology. These thinkers offered something that resonated deeply: a view of intelligence that wasn't limited to logic or language, and a vision of the psyche that embraced complexity rather than reducing it.

My own reflections on languages and the perception of reality led me naturally to Steven Pinker work on linguistics and ultimately to his provocative book The Blank Slate. Around the same time, I immersed myself in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow—a masterful exploration of the dual processes of reasoning—and Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, which wrestled with the mysteries of awareness.

Along this journey, I consumed dozens, perhaps hundreds of books touching on cognition, metacognition, perception, language, and the elusive, essential trait we call self-awareness. The deeper I went, the more I realized that understanding the mind is not just an academic exercise. It is a profoundly human one.

This journey shaped not only my thinking but my teaching, parenting, and leadership. I served as a professor and university president, worked in advanced vehicle design at Ford Motor Company, and led educational initiatives in the Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Yet, through every role, I returned to one core mission: to understand how we think, and to help others do the same.

That mission was most present in my own home. In fact, my first and most important audience has always been my four children. They were raised in a home filled with books, debates, and what they sometimes considered “lectures” on thinking, awareness, and the power of reflection. I may have bored them at times with my monologues on metacognition, but those conversations were seeds.

I understood that helping them become self-aware was not optional. It was essential. As a family living between cultures, I knew that identity would be a balancing act, a negotiation between roots and futures. Self-awareness became a compass for them, allowing each to chart a path that was both grounded and free.

Today, I am proud to say they’ve grown into thoughtful, capable, and grounded adults blending tradition with independence, identity with openness. And if I had even a small role in helping them blend the best of both worlds—East and West, heritage and future—I consider that my most important accomplishment.

Now, I continue writing and speaking about the critical importance of metacognition, self-awareness, and critical thinking in both education and parenting. I believe these capacities are not optional; they are essential for human freedom, ethical development, and meaningful learning.

This website is a space where I share essays and reflections drawn from decades of inquiry, teaching, and lived experience. If you are curious about how the mind works—and how we can raise wiser, more reflective human beings—I invite you to explore.

Let us raise minds that are not only informed, but aware.

Dr. Basem Alzahabi