Ala Michael "Trig" Tarazi '89 is a person of contrasts: madcap humor and solemnity, nationalism and iconoclasm.

For Tarazi, seeming extremes combine in unexpected ways. Take the explanation of his nickname, for example. Why "Trig"?

"I failed it in eighth grade," he says. But after a laugh, he turns serious and explains why he chose to introduce himself by that name the following year, when he entered Phillips Andover Academy.

"It was largely out of a sense of embarrassment" over having an Arabic first name, he says. "Growing up Arab in America is not easy--much harder than growing up gay in America," says Tarazi, who has done both. He recalls seeing Arabs in movies and comic strips as cruel terrorists or wealthy sheiks--nothing he aspired to become.

The nickname has stuck, but the embarrassment has not. Tarazi now hopes to spend his life working for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), most likely as a publicist in this country.

He describes his choice as natural for a Palestinian--like going to Washington for an American. "It's like, you go and work for your government."

Tarazi says the organization needs more American-trained people like himself who can "speak for the PLO in an accent that Americans can understand." He says the organization's representatives have done little to improve their image with Americans. "They wear dark glasses; they wear kaffiyehs," he says, referring to the traditional checkered scarf that is a mark of Palestinian identity.

Clad in the Oxford cloth of Andover and Harvard, Tarazi speaks with the American accent he learned in Pennsylvania and Colorado schools. He is also a practiced debater, arguing forcefully on political subjects that most Americans approach cautiously for fear of giving offense.

Tarazi defends the PLO with well-honed technique. He says he opposes violence himself and notes that the nationalist organization has recently renounced terrorism. Comparing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the war in Afghanistan, he adds, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

On campus, Tarazi has served since early 1988 as president of the Society of Arab Students (SAS). Under his leadership, the group has shifted from predominantly cultural activities to increasingly political ones, such as last fall's successful campaign supporting a Cambridge ballot question on Palestinian rights.

After graduation, Tarazi will spend the next year on a Benjamin Trustman traveling fellowship studying Palestinians' efforts to preserve their culture as minorities within several Middle Eastern countries.

Tarazi's next step will be Harvard Law School, where he has deferred admission. He says he needs a law degree to act as an advocate for Arab-Americans as well as the Palestinian cause in the United States.

As an undergraduate, Tarazi is known as a passionate advocate of gay rights, as well as Palestinian statehood. By all accounts, he cheerfully broaches uncomfortable subjects in both areas.

But Tarazi does not like to mix his causes, nor does he give them equal importance in his life. "I don't want people to see me as a gay Palestinian," he says. Tarazi would rather be a Palestinian activist in public and a defender of gay rights in private conversation, he says.

"I was openly gay at a very early age...as a freshman--even in high school--and the fact that I was openly gay made people believe that I was an activist," Tarazi says.