"Building Educational Institutions Abroad: American Expats as Informal Diplomats"
Following the centennial of Anatolia College in Thessaloniki's establishment and to commemorate its 25th anniversary season of public service initiatives, the Michael and Kitty Dukakis Center for Public and Humanitarian Service at ACT, has invited Sarah B. Snyder, Professor of Global Inquiry at American University in Washington, DC, to deliver the Silver Jubilee Dukakis Lecture.The event will take place on Wednesday, April 30, 6 PM, at Emilio Riadis Hall, TIF-Helexpo.
It will also include a round table discussion on the founding of American educational and cultural institutions in late and post-Ottoman Greece, featuring: Dr. Evi Tramantza, Director of Libraries & Archives, 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 in Athens.
The lecture will be based on Professor Snyder's forthcoming book, "Unofficial Diplomats," which illustrates how private American citizens shaped the place of the United States in the world throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, serving as unofficial diplomats, representing the United States when formal relations did not exist or functioning as informal ambassadors to foreign communities alongside official US representatives. Of particular interest to Anatolia College stakeholders are the efforts of expat Americans to create schools, colleges, and other cultural institutions in Greece and Ottoman Asia Minor.
The lecture will contextualize the transformation when Anatolia migrated to Thessaloniki and elucidate the efforts of American expats — missionaries and secular figures alike —who contributed to and continue contributing to the school's well-being and renown. The event will also be an opportunity to take stock of the many lectures and other extracurricular activities that have contributed to forging Anatolia's unique identity over the decades.
Representatives of Anatolia College, the American Farm School, and the American School of Classical Studies will join Professor Snyder for a post-lecture discussion. These institutions were all created by American expats during a formative period of US foreign relations.
The lecture and round table will be in English and are open to the public.
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About Sarah Snyder
Sarah B. Snyder is a historian who specializes in the influence of non-state actors such as human rights activists and expatriates on US foreign relations. She is the author of prize-winning scholarship, including four books and numerous scholarly articles.
She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed US Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018). The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations. Her first book, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, (Cambridge University Press), analyzes the development of a transnational network devoted to human rights advocacy and its contributions to the end of the Cold War. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2012 Stuart Bernath Book Prize for best first book by an author and the 2012 Myrna F. Bernath Book Award for the best book written by a woman in the field in the previous two years.
Her current research studies the influence of expatriates on US foreign relations in such places as the late Ottoman near East. In addition to her current position at AU, she has taught and lectured at UCL, Yale, and Georgetown. Professor Snyder is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
- Named in honor of former Governor of Massachusetts (and Greek-American) Michael Dukakis, the Dukakis Center is an independent, non-partisan administrative unit of the American College of Thessaloniki, the university division of Anatolia College. The primary mission of the Dukakis Center is to encourage young people to take an active interest in public affairs. The Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary season of public service initiatives in 2024-25.
