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 HAA executive director John Reardon, Angelica Zander Rudenstine, outgoing HAA European regional director Douglass Carver, and President Rudenstine in Paris. |
In just under a week this summer, President Neil L. Rudenstine spoke to almost a thousand alumni and friends of the University as Harvard paid its first formal visit to European affiliates in 15 years.
How Europe has changed in the interval was evident at the dinner hosted by the Harvard Club of Berlin on June 26 for the Rudenstines and retiring Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) president Carl Pforzheimer '58, M.B.A. '63, who accompanied them. The guests included alumni from Warsaw and Prague; the site was an historic restaurant on what in 1982 would have been the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. How Harvard is changing, particularly as it enhances and diversifies its international involvement, and as information technology transforms academic methods, was the main theme Rudenstine shared with his audiences.
The trip gave the president a chance to visit a different--and growing--part of the University community. In the last six years, Harvard clubs have appeared in Russia, Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Finland, and Cyprus; the number of European clubs now stands at 25, and club officers in different countries are networking with each other more often. Some of the clubs raise scholarship funds to support local students at the University: the Harvard Club of France, for example, distributed close to $20,000 in financial aid to six recipients this year. Douglass Carver '59, who stepped down in June as the HAA's European regional director, points out that European alumni generally have graduate, rather than College, ties to Harvard; about half of them have studied at the business school, with the law school and Kennedy school also well represented. Carver would like to see the other professional schools increase their visibility on the Continent, as the business and law schools have done.
 Harvard "came to" Paris on June 28 when the Harvard Club of France, the Harvard Business School Club de France, the Harvard Law School Association of France, and the Association des Anciens Boursiers Arthur Sachs à Harvard hosted a lecture and dinner in honor of President Rudenstine at the Palais du Luxembourg, seat of the French Senate, under the patronage of Président du Sénat René Monory. Looking on (left) as the president speaks are Senator Charles Jolibois, LL.M. '51, seated to Mrs. Rudenstine's right, and, standing beside Douglass Carver, Jacques Salès, LL.M. '67, who served as the evening's master of ceremonies and next year will become the first international president of the Harvard Law Alumni Association. |
The Rudenstine trip, in Carver's opinion, set an excellent precedent. The tour included formal events in Düsseldorf, Paris, and London that featured faculty lectures as well as speeches by the president. In Düsseldorf on June 27 some 200 German and Benelux alumni and guests heard Weatherhead University Professor Samuel P. Huntington discuss the subject of his most recent book, The Clash of Civilizations, and the possible implications for Europe; so did the 350 alumni and guests who gathered in London on July 1. The 250 people who attended the program in Paris on June 28 heard Buttenwieser University Professor Stanley Hoffmann share his perspectives on changes at Harvard during his 40 years as a French transplant in Cambridge.
But the spotlight remained on Rudenstine, whose visit drew the presidents of the Harvard clubs of Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin to one or another of the formal sessions. Rudenstine "spoke so positively about the importance of being the best and providing the best education possible...about the principle that graduates are supplied with the tools necessary to continue to learn for the rest of their lives," reported Bernhard Heine, M.B.A. '90, president of the Harvard Club of Berlin. "His words struck a chord with everyone in the room, even non-alumni. There is no substitute for this kind of close contact."
In addition to updating his audiences on the University's plans and actions, Rudenstine also recognized several alumni for their dedicated efforts in Europe on Harvard's behalf: Jobst-Hinrich von Bülow, LL.M. '57, who has served for 26 years as president of the Harvard Club of Rhein-Ruhr; Douglass Carver, for his work as regional director and on behalf of the Harvard Club of France (see Leaders by Example); and James V. Baker '68, M.B.A. '71, Carver's successor as HAA European regional director, who was stepping down as president of the Harvard Club of London after building its membership to the second largest in Europe (only the Harvard Club of Switzerland boasts more members). And the president, in turn, received an unexpected honor: at the banquet in Paris, French senator Charles Jolibois, LL.M. '51, awarded Rudenstine a medal of the Republic in appreciation for what he called one of the happiest years of his youth.
For his part, President Rudenstine called the trip "exhilarating, from beginning to end...Our hosts could not have been warmer in their welcome, or more deeply interested in Harvard and its plans for the future." Above all, the president noted, "We saw firsthand the strength of Harvard's longstanding ties with Europe, and felt how important it will be to strengthen those ties in the years ahead."