Enthusiasm and thoughtfulness: a winning combination

Meet Christina Politi.

Christina recently graduated from SAIS Bologna and, like most Bologna Center students, will be spending the second year of her master's program at SAIS Washington starting in August.

Consider Christina's background. She was born in Athens and outside her native Greece has lived in Australia, Brussels, Tokyo and the United States. She received a B.S. from Georgetown with a GPA of 3.9 and also a Certificate in International Business Diplomacy.

In the summer of 2009, she interned in Athens for the National Center for Scientific Research “DEMOKRITOS”. She was on the Board of the Georgetown International Relations Club and was also active in the school’s Hellenic Association. She speaks Greek, English, French and Spanish, and received a fellowship from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to attend SAIS.

The range of Christina's experiences and her accomplishments speak volumes about the kind of student who decides to come to SAIS. We are looking for individuals who want to make a difference on the international stage and who are equipping themselves with the tools to do so.

Christina won one of three C. Grove Haines awards for academic excellence that were given out last month at SAIS Bologna graduation. I thought you might be interested in reading the work that won Christina the prize.

Christina Politi receives her
C. Grove Haines award from
Prof. Mark Gilbert

Before showing you the winning essay, a word of background. Christina wrote the paper in a course taught by Prof. Mark Gilbert entitled, "Europe in the Cold War". Here is a thumbnail description of the course, which is part of the European Studies concentration:

Beginning with the outcome and consequences of World War II, this course will examine the major trends and developments in the politics of Western Europe during the Cold War (1945–1991). Topics treated include the Stalinization of Eastern Europe, European integration, decolonization, the events of 1968, democratization in the Mediterranean, the transatlantic relationship and Europe’s role in the shaping of East-West relations. The course concludes with the great events of 1989-1992 in Central (and Western) Europe. The course is taught partly by illustrated lectures, partly by discussion of articles, books, original documents and films.

Christina reaches a sobering conclusion in her 14-page essay, entitled, "American Intervention in Greece 1946-64".

: "...[T]he United States had without a doubt, through passive and active involvement, a profound impact on the political, economic, and military development of Greece."

How is this relevant today?  "In fact, the roots of the current crisis [in Greece] are to be found in the immediate postwar history of the country.... Patronage and corruption have continued to plague the country, inhibiting economic growth as well as deeply needed structural reform of the socio-economic and political system."

In the words of Prof. Gilbert: "Christina Politi's essay was the work of a student who was able to research and write dispassionately on a subject she deeply cared about. I hope that future students will show the same enthusiasm and comparable thoughtfulness."

Here is Christina's paper as she submitted it to Prof. Gilbert.

Enjoy. Feel free to send in your comments.

Nelson Graves

Weekly Quiz

Before we dive into the weekly quiz, some housekeeping matters.

All of you who will be attending SAIS Bologna in 2011-12 should have received your JHED by now. Please contact us if you have not. If you have not yet activated your email account, please do so as soon as possible.

Your calculus DVDs are in the mail and should reach you soon. 

Also, all incoming students who applied through the Bologna Admissions Office should have received their original admission and visa letters. If you have not, you know where to find us. 

And now, on to the quiz:

At last week's SAIS Bologna graduation ceremony, three students received awards for academic excellence. Who are the awards named after? 

The first person to reply correctly gets a SAIS Bologna tee shirt. The answer on Monday.

Amina Abdiuahab

It is a beginning

The academic year ended a week ago. Most of the students have gone. A handful are still around waiting to get on a plane to return home for a short while before starting to work an internship somewhere around the world. Earlier this week we showed you moments of the Commencement ceremony. Today, we want to share the speech Matthew Carroll (U.S. BC11) delivered at the ceremony. Enjoy! 

I was walking to school, feeling good, as you do with a fresh haircut and a cone of frosty gelato on a hot day. Like so many countless times before, I strolled beneath the shade of Bologna's porticoes breathing deep the millennium of wisdom trapped beneath their frescoed hoods. I would soon see my fellow students in the library. All their smiles, although begrudged by last minute term papers, would glimmer none the less. My mind whisked me back those earliest of our days here: the joyous confusion, the endless introductions, the excitement of learning new things among new friends. We scrambled to get up to speed in economics, but only if it left enough time for aperitivos under the balmy August sun. Ample celebration; convivial beginnings; good times indeed. 

And so, as the cioccolato and nocciole waltzed their creamy pas de dieux across my taste buds and the church bells rung their charming peal, I was reminded of something the first time I stood here that we should never lose sight of: we live in ghastly and terrifying world. 

Over the horizon, a foaming sea churns, poised to engulf our coasts in determined angry swirls; roaring wild fires, perfect storms and a sinister tag team of torrential flooding and global desiccation threaten to hurl our civilization back to the time before tool making - all this rage of nature educed and unleashed by collective shortsightedness. 

The global economic machine rattles on, but the teeth of its gears have rusted to brittle nubs like those of some woebegone child's long forgotten music box, playing a more pallid and disharmonious dirge with every cycle of its crank. And the vexed, swelling and increasingly armed hordes of the jobless will no longer be lulled its tune. 

And in terms of security, don't be fooled by the recent spate of justice. There still are many who wake up in the morning, put on their bathrobes and, before brushing their teeth glare at their reflection in the mirror and say: There can be no peace. Although we've extinguished the pilot light, the embers of transnational terrorism smolder on. 

Perhaps the only speck of contrast visible in the dark days ahead will be all the white knuckles, clinging to hysteria as we spiral downward toward perdition. 

Perhaps not. Because then again, there's you. 

This summer you will travel to all corners of this Earth. In the developing world, you will pitch in your sweat to wrest the weak from the muzzle of poverty. In your homelands, you will channel your intellect into the public sector so that your people will know greater freedom tomorrow. You will bolster the clout international organizations, working to transform tenuous peace into permanent order. You will learn mysterious tongues that will allow you to build bridges of trade, culture and friendship across disparate civilizations. Your ingenuity in energy may one day liberate us form the bondage of smog. By applying your hard work and talent to the private sector, you will indeed call forth the phoenix of commerce from its ashy bay. And this all of you will do for free. 

So my appeal? Arm yourself with the skills and sagaciousness of this first year, and charge into the gloom; beat back to the rising sea, extinguish the inferno, build concord anew. And see to it that the villains have a very, very bad day, indeed. Classmates, this is a commencement gathering. It is a beginning. A time not for reflection, but for projection. And so hence forth, project your luminescence unto the world. You are the heroes. You are the light, BC Class of 2011. You are remarkable in so many ways. It’s an honor to learn alongside you. Thank you. 

Matt





Amina Abdiuahab 

SAIS Bologna Center 2011 Graduation

The class:

The program:

The ceremony and reception:



Nelson Graves

Weekly quiz

At the bottom of this post you will find two videos from yesterday's graduation ceremony at SAIS in Washington, DC.

Josette Sheeran

The first video captures the entire event. You may not have 2 hours and 21 minutes of spare time or the inclination to watch people you do not know receive diplomas. If you'd like to hear and see Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, deliver her speech, it starts at the 0:43 mark (that is, 43 minutes into the video) and lasts a relatively brief 23 minutes. The student speaker, Analisa Ribeiro Bala from South Africa, speaks near the end, at 2:04 (2 hours 4 minutes).

The second, more compact video captures some graduates offering their thanks after the ceremony.

Tomorrow, the SAIS Bologna Class of 2011 celebrates its graduation. Most of the students will be going to Washington for the second and final year of their master's. Next Tuesday we will offer a slide show of still photos plus some brief video comments from students.

Now, this week's quiz.

A recent post on this blog contained a video with a voice-over in the sound track. Whose voice is it on the video?







Nelson Graves

SAIS graduations -- on the Web and in photographs

The academic year is drawing to a close at SAIS, both in Bologna and Washington, DC.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, will speak on Thursday at the graduation ceremony at SAIS DC. Her speech will be on "Transformational Leadership in a Flat World."

If you are interested in watching the ceremony and following Sheeran's speech, you can do so by going to www.sais-jhu.edu. The ceremony will be broadcast live starting at 3 pm Washington time (GMT-5) on Thursday.

Graduation -- also called "Commencement" in the United States -- at SAIS Bologna will be this Saturday, May 28. While we will not offer a Webcast of the event, we do plan to post a selection of photographs next week, to honor those moving on and to give incoming students and prospective applicants a sense of the occasion.

Nelson Graves