History and International Relations at the Dukakis Center
There is a photograph of the fundraising gala held in Boston in honor of former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis by the Trustees of Anatolia College in 1998. It was a black tie event, and by all accounts a successful evening. A sizable sum was raised, forming the core of what became known as the Dukakis Endowment.
In the center of the photograph in question then-President WIlliam McGrew stands next to Michael and Kitty Dukakis. One suspects the event was scheduled to coincide with the annual autumn trustees meeting in Boston. The other guests in the photograph are trustees and their spouses.
The pairing of William McGrew and Michael Dukakis was highly symbolic. One of the objectives of the creation of an endowed chair bearing the name of the 1988 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States was to enhance the recently formed undergraduate major program in history and international relations. McGrew was by training a Ph.D. historian who had served in the US Foreign Service for a short time before taking up the reins at Anatolia in 1974. History and diplomacy were here represented side by side with politics and public policy, embodied by Dukakis. (In tribute to Kitty Dukakis, a humanitarian dimension would be added to the equation formally in 2011.) These fields of study would be united under the banner of public service, a value which had animated Anatolia College since its foundation in Asia Minor in the late nineteenth century.
For sure, ACT had hosted prominent historians like WIlliam McNeil and Lord Asa Briggs before Michael and Kitty Dukakis first visited Anatolia in September 1999. It is also true that many of the events and activities organized under the auspices of the Dukakis Chair and Center celebrated other academic domains. (William McGrew’s successor, retired foreign service officer Richard Jackson, studied English literature as an undergraduate at Princeton.) Nonetheless, countless events hosted between 2000 and 2025 have focused on history and politics, or, as we then called it, history and international relations.
The Dukakis Center has hosted diplomats and historians and public figures since the very beginning. The record is impressive. By the end of our third full year we had hosted Mark Mazower, Van Coufoudakis, Victor Davis Hanson, Thea Halo, Stephen Whitfield, and Barbara Harrell-Bond. Those whose work or works have subsequently been feted include Heath Lowry, Brady Kiesling, Jenifer Neils, Yannis Stefanidis, Evangelos Kofos, Marilyn Yalom, Rena Molho, Angelos Chaniotis, Harris Mylonas, Thanos Veremis, Jeffrey Engel, Mary Beth Norton, and, why not, George Toulas. (One could never, alas, persuade ACT’s own Joseph Michael Gratale to put in an appearance.)
The Dukakis Center has always sought to maintain a healthy balance between scholarship and practice, hence some of the names on the list. The same has applied to those invited to discuss international relations with our audiences. Nikiforos Diamandouros, who spoke on two distinct occasions at Dukakis Center events, represents this balancing act perfectly.
It is fitting, then, that the final event of the silver jubilee celebration coming to a close this month at the Dukakis Center should be the presentation of a splendid new book by the Serres-based historian Kostas Diogos. One might think of this event as a coda of sorts to the vision outgoing Executive Director -- and fellow historian -- David Wisner has had of the Center, a public meditation on education and service and their role in promoting friendship and cooperation between the peoples of the United States and the Hellenic Republic.
The jury may still be out on the impact the Dukakis Center has had since September 1999, but the next chapter of our history is ready to be written.
