Dukakis Center celebrates founding of American institutions in Greece
The Dukakis Center at ACT continued its silver jubilee celebrations with a special Dukakis Lecture on the role of expatriate Americans in founding educational institutions in Greece and throughout the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On Wednesday, April 30, guest speaker Sarah Snyder, Professor of Global Inquiry at American University in Washington, DC, delivered a lecture entitled "Building Educational Institutions Abroad: American Expatriates as Informal Diplomats" at the Emilio Riadis Congress Hall, TIF-Helexpo.
Professor Snyder’s lecture analyzed how expatriate communities throughout the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world founded permanent local institutions that marked their American identity in multiple ways. She profiled nineteenth-century missionaries like Daniel Bliss, who established the Syrian Protestant College, the predecessor of American University of Beirut; and Cyrus Hamlin, who set up Robert College in Istanbul. Snyder’s presentation also showcased the efforts of Americans who established overseas research centers, including Charles McKim, who created the American Academy in Rome; and William Goodwin, the first director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Professor Snyder’s principal point was that the endeavors of American faculty and staff revealed them as novel actors in U.S. foreign relations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Professor Snyder drew her material from her forthcoming book “Unofficial Diplomats, a history of Americans abroad and how they have influenced U.S. foreign policy, to be published by Princeton University Press next year. The book analyzes the impact of expatriates from early American missionaries through the kidnapping of American academics in Lebanon in the 1980s, and reveals a precocious American network throughout the region of schools, churches, clubs, and even cemeteries constructed by missionaries, teachers, businesspeople, and journalists.”
Joining Professor Snyder in a lively round table discussion following the lecture were representatives of three American educational institutions in Greece, Dr. Evi Tramantza, Director of Libraries, Anatolia College; Damiana Koutsomiha, Head Librarian, American Farm School; and Dr. Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Doreen Canaday Spitzer Director of Archives, American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Evi Tramantza observed that Anatolia College, founded in Merzifon in 1886, closely resembled the schools discussed in Sarah Snyder’s lecture. Dr. Tramantza highlighted the importance of Carl Compton, who began teaching at Anatolia in 1913, relocated to Thessaloniki in 1925, and was named President of Anatolia in 1950. (It should be remembered that Anatolia College was compelled to leave Asia Minor after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.)
Dr. Tramantza and Damiana Koutsomiha, Head Librarian at the American Farm School, emphasized the American values of problem solving, team work, learning by doing, humanitarian service, and community building as being an essential legacy of the founders of their school. Ms Koutsomiha also underscored the long-term impact of American schools overseas like the American Farm School, while also pointing out the uniquely pragmatic concerns of the Farm School’s missionary founders.
Dr. Vogiekoff revealed that while the American School of Classical Studies in Athens has traditionally had as its mission to train Americans classicists and archeologists to appreciate Greece and transmit that knowledge to compatriots in the U.S., the School has more recently begun supporting Greek scholars with no necessary American connections. It might be said also that the School embodies characteristic values of research excellence and professionalism which are often associated with American academic institutions stateside.
David Wisner, Executive Director of the Dukakis Center, reminded the audience in concluding remarks that Anatolia College began a new chapter in its history in 2013 when a Hellene, Dr. Panagiotis Vlachos, was named the school’s twelfth President. This sentiment of reciprocity also animates the Dukakis Center, which not only brings American speakers like Sarah Snyder to Greek audiences in Thessaloniki, but also showcases accomplished Hellenes to American students attending ACT.
Following the event Dr. Wisner enthused, “This was among the most meaningful and moving of any of the events I have organized at the Dukakis Center since its launch over 25 years ago. Congratulations to our local participants, and heartfelt thanks to the American leadership at these institutions for giving our Hellenic colleagues space to absorb and bring to life the “American” values of which Ms Koutsohiha spoke, for instance, and to add through their own personal example what is best in traditional and contemporary Greek culture.”
Earlier in the day on April 30 David Wisner accompanied Professor to the studios of DION TV where she sat for a wide-ranging interview with Dr. Dimitra Makri.
