From the Department of what has and might have been
The arrival in 1999 of Richard Jackson as the new President of Anatolia College coincided with the launch of the Dukakis Chair and the first visit to ACT of Michael and Kitty Dukakis. Jackson's influence was decisive, notes David Wisner, Executive Director of the Dukakis Center. "Dick's mantra was to not fear punching above our weight," says Professor Wisner. "He certainly encouraged me to be ambitious, and so I was throughout his tenure as president of ACT."
Among the events Jackson and Wisner planned but never staged were lectures in 2000 by William Cohen, Secretary of Defense during the second Clinton Administration, and in 2007-08 by Jean-Pierre Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a Minister in several French governments who ran for the French Presidency in 2002. What might have been.
Years later, well after Richard Jackson had retired, Wisner invited Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Minister of Digital Affairs, to deliver a keynote address via hologram teleconference at a conference to have taken place in March 2020. The event was cancelled owing to the outbreak in Greece of COVID-19.
Around that same time, during our twentieth anniversary season of public service initiatives, we compiled a tally of the events organized by and the then approximately 242 individual guests hosted at the Dukakis Center. The list has continued to expand since then, and given the proliferation of webcasts and webinars we have hosted it is nearly impossible to pull together a definitive list.
Regardless, we take this opportunity to thank some of those friends and colleagues who have spoken on more than one occasion at the Dukakis Center over the years. Hats off to John Koenig, former US Ambassador to Cyprus, and Charles Stewart, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, for holding the record to date of five appearances each (in person or virtually). Anna Damaskou was our most frequent partner during her tenure as President of the Board of Transparency International Greece.
Nicholas Burns, Monteagle Stearns, Jenifer Neils, Kostas Ifantis, Tasos Telloglou, Othon Anastasakis, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Efi Stefopoulou, Nikos Marantzidis, Tasos Tzikas, Dimitris Bouras, Dimitris Savvaidis, Nelson Graves, Kostas Kallergis, Alec Mally, Ilias Kouskouvelis+, Alan Makovsky, Epaminondas Christofilopoulos, Harry Lalatsis, Anna Damaskou, Ruth Sutton, and Alexandros Mallias.
In this spirit, it is also appropriate to offer deepest thanks to our sometime honorary advisory board members, whose number included Alan Henrikson, Alan Cafruny, Gerry Stoker, John Koenig, Leonidas Evangelidis, and Pavlos Apostolides.
Pictured: Anna Damaskou speaking at the Dukakis Center conference "Gatekeepers of Democracy, Athens, 2019. Photo credit: Asterios Gousios
