Salzburg Celebration

In addition to the half-century anniversary of the Marshall Plan (see "Reconstructing Europe," May-June), 1997 marks a similar milestone in the life of a continuing institution, the Salzburg Seminar. Conceived by Harvard students, the seminar was hailed as "the first general experiment in international education in postwar Europe" in the April 12, 1947,Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Subsequent issues reported on the progress of this "important element in the cultural exchange" between the United States and "that part of Western Europe on our side of the Iron Curtain," and pleaded for funds and supplies. That the seminar's circumstances have improved was reported in this magazine's "Encounters at the Schloss" (November-December 1987, page 66). The seminar's 17,000 alumni will celebrate with a "homecoming" in October, along with regularly scheduled programs on world trade, nationalism, and international law. Its circle of friends has also broadened eastward: among the speakers this year is Mikhail Gorbachev. To another 50 years of civil discourse!