From cultural engagement to questions of values and institutions.
A journey that began at university and continued through writing, public engagement and professional practice, leading to the School of Values.
Amar Murray
Amar Murray is an independent researcher, writer, and founder and chairman of Tamkine Consulting Group. His work examines how values shape institutions, how declared principles are translated into decisions, and why institutional practice may diverge from them. Drawing on more than two decades of entrepreneurship, consulting and public engagement, he is developing the School of Values and its foundational manuscript, The Theory of Value Pathways. He is based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
Intellectual and cultural beginnings
I am Amar Murray, an independent researcher and writer, also published in Arabic as عمار مرعي, based in Burlington, Ontario. My engagement with ideas and cultural activity began at university, with a particular interest in philosophy, sociology and comparative religion. Over the years, I contributed critical essays, participated in seminars and cultural events, and took part in movements opposing dictatorship.
Before 2011, this work was also accompanied by lectures and workshops in ideas, cultural engagement and public life, providing space for discussion, training and the development of ideas.
In 1997, I co-founded Tahaddi, a movement for social and cultural change, with a group of young intellectuals, both women and men. Grounded in freedom, justice and democracy, the initiative operated clandestinely under political and security conditions that prohibited independent cultural and political activity.
Public engagement and continuing cultural work
In 2011, I participated as a founding member of the Syrian National Council. During the Council’s conference in Tunisia, I was elected Deputy Head of its Diaspora Office. In the same year, I took part in a meeting of the General Secretariat of the Syrian Scholars Association in Antakya as a member of the General Secretariat.
I then moved from institutional roles in public life towards intellectual and humanitarian work, continuing to write and lecture in criticism of dictatorship and to explore questions of freedom, justice and social change. My experience in 2011 allowed me to see from within the challenges emerging institutions face when trying to translate declared principles into decisions and practice. It deepened my interest in the relationship between values and institutions, and in societies’ capacity to reassess their mistakes and correct their course, questions that later became central to the School of Values.
Since 2011, I have continued writing articles, delivering lectures and participating in seminars in Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere. In 2013, I delivered a course in strategic planning for political parties in Istanbul, at the invitation of the Muslim Thinkers Association, attended by a number of party leaders. In the years that followed, I delivered several workshops bringing together values, intellectual questions and institutional planning. Since 2021, I have also delivered two Zoom lectures each month. These sessions have provided an ongoing space for dialogue, testing ideas and connecting them with the challenges of institutional work and decision-making. Every lecture has been recorded and preserved. The recordings are not currently published, but selected excerpts may be made available in the future.
My articles have appeared in Arabic and English in various newspapers and websites, exploring ideas, history and social change. These writings mark stages in an ongoing intellectual journey, and I revisit them as positions open to reconsideration.
Professional experience
Alongside this work, I gained more than two decades of experience in establishing and managing businesses, including founding Tamkine Consulting Group and leading its projects in strategic planning, institutional development and capacity building. This experience kept me close to questions of decision-making and implementation, and the difficulties of translating plans into institutional practice. I hold an MBA from Edinburgh Napier University, with a focus on Leadership and Innovation.
Towards the School of Values
The questions behind the School of Values took shape through this journey of reading, writing, public engagement and institutional experience. The relationship between the principles societies embrace and the outcomes they achieve became central to my research, particularly their capacity to reassess mistakes and change course.
I am developing this project through research, essays and lectures. My book, The Theory of Value Pathways, is a completed manuscript and the project’s first foundational text. I try to make thought and experience each a means of reassessing the other.