Following an invitation by the Dukakis Center, the newly installed US Consul General in Thessaloniki, Ms. Rebecca Fong, visited ACT on November 30 to address students on interested in a diplomatic career, sharing some of her experience in the field.

With a diverse academic and professional background, Ms. Fong discussed various aspects of working in the foreign service, ranging from the reasons why one could or should choose such a career, to a training process that involves language skills and expertise development, such as in trade or in refugee matters.

Drawing from her international experience both as a diplomat and as an executive in the private sector, Ms. Fong shared some of her insight on understanding, respecting and adjusting to different cultural norms as part of building bridges of trust in any professional environment. She also highlighted the importance of integrity and honesty in establishing personal relations with various interlocutors.

Ms. Fong interacted with students on issues such as balancing a lifestyle that involves moving around the world every few years, being a woman in a male-dominated environment, and managing more bureaucratic tasks as part of her job.

2015 has been the year of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. The Dukakis Center marked the commemoration in February with a lecture by Armen Marsoobian, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Southern Connecticut State University, on efforts to memorialize the experience of Armenians in Asia Minor at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Professor Marsoobian shared his recent experience mounting exhibitions of photographs from his family collection in Istanbul, Merzifon, and elsewhere. The photographs, taken by members of the Dildidian family, one of whom happened for a time to be the official photographer of Anatolia College in Merzifon, represented scenes from Merzifon and Samsun, and shed light on the social life of the Armenian community on the eve of the Genocide.

An audience of some 80 guests, many of them youth from the local Armenian Community, heard Professor Marsoobian share his conception of memorializing the experience of this community as a means of helping overcome the genocide denial that is still prevalent in Turkey today. He showed several historic photographs along with views from the exhibitions themselves. He described the impact of the exhibitions and some of the efforts he made to discover hidden or obscured monuments to the Armenian presence in Anatolia in the early part of the century.

The most moving part of Professor Marsoobian’s talk was a pair of brief clips with interviews of his mother and his uncle before they passed away, detailing some of their recollections of their family life in Merzifon and their relations with the Turkish population there. Marsoobian tried thus not only to document the facts of the Genocide, but also to provide vignettes of the daily life of Armenians before tragedy befell them.

In his introductory remarks David Wisner, Director of the Dukakis Center, observed that Professor Marsoobian’s lecture was meant in part to celebrate the relationship between an institution, Anatolia, and a community, the Armenians of Asia Minor and of Thessaloniki.

A group of ACT students and Dukakis Center interns travelled to the northern Greek village of Eidomeni on November 27 to distribute food and take stock of the situation of the makeshift refuge camps at the border between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 

The group were members of a Dukakis Masterclass in Photojournalism being conducted by renowned photojournalist Dimitris Bouras (SBALA ' 94). They brought -- and served -- food collected the day before at Anatolia's annual Thanksgiving feast, including fresh vegetables, rice, and turkey, with extra bread donated by a Panorama bakery and tangerines from a local greengrocer. 

When the group arrived in Eidomeni, transported in a small bus operated by Splendid Travel, they took stock of their surroundings and managed to locate one of the food distribution tents run by an independent NGO, thanks to Christa Colbas, a volunteer who accompanied the group from Thessaloniki. Given the prevailing weather conditions, with a steady, cold rain falling and mud and puddles everywhere, the group opted to take shelter in the food tent and help serve the queue of refugees who quickly assembled to take their midday meal.

After an hour of service, the ACT group returned to the bus to gather clothes and blankets that the students have gathered in Thessaloniki. A few accompanied Mr Bouras to the border, where a handful of Iranian refugees had been engaged in a hunger strike to protest not being allowed by the FYRoM authorities to cross the border and continue their trek toward northern Europe.

The students in the Masterclass will mount an informal exhibition of their photographs from Eidomeni to help raise awareness of the plight of the refugees stuck at the border.

"This is my first visit to Thessaloniki. I am struck by the traces of French presence in the city.”
-- Jean Quatremer

The Dukakis Center hosted the distinguished French journalist Jean Quatremer for a Dukakis Lecture on Friday, November 20, at the Municipality of Thessaloniki. The event was co-sponsored by the French Institute of Thessaloniki and the Journalist's Union of Macedonia-Thrace, with further support from the Consulate-General of France in Thessaloniki and TV100.

The event began with the observation of a minute of silence in memory of the victims of terrorist attacks in Kenya, Beirut, Paris, and, on the very day of the event, Mali, and an elegant homage in Greek by Consul-General Christophe Le Rigoleur.

M Quatremer followed up on this theme in an initial exchange with Filios Stangos, Director-General of TV100, who moderated the event in the form of an extended interview. What are the potential pitfalls of our gut reactions to the Paris terrorist attacks and the ongoing refugee crisis? What do we prioritize, stability or security? Should we fear the rise of the extreme right? What can Greece do?

Coming next to Greece, the main subject of his lecture, and of his recent documentary for ARTE on the Greek referendum of July 2015, Quatremer elaborated an argument according to which Greece is a nation but not a functional state. “In Europe people are asking, is the Greek state serious?" This allows us to understand the various reactions of Greece's partners in the EU and the eurozone.

Explaining the apparent lack of trust expressed by other members of the eurozone, Quatremer proposed that Greek leaders never learned to coexist in the gentlemen's club of European statesmanship, according to which one does not question the word of a fellow leader -- one's word should be one's bond.

While resisting the temptation to tell the audience what Greece -- and her partners --should do, Quatremer did offer two thoughts. First, to conclude his discussion, he repeated a thought he has expressed more than once in his blog in the French daily Libération: regardless of one’s personal political preferences, we must hope that Prime Minister Tsipras is successful, that he brings about the modernization of the Greek state.  

The European Union has a problematic role to play in this process. However, athough the EU must “continue to pressure Greece to undertake necessary reforms... the international community does not have the capacity to rebuild the Greek state.” Greece cannot be expected to pay back the loans it has received since 2010.

Second, more privately, he revealed that his role as journalist is to disturb people, to say things that others might refrain from saying. He has spoken publicly in Greece on occasion since 2011, and the response of Greek auditors to his critique of the dysfunctionalities of the Greek state is often one of appreciation, as if to say that he had articulated things people think and know to be true with a voice of truth and authority. "Each time that I dialog with Greeks they have reacted well -- people like to hear the truth."

What can be done? The problems can be fixed, Jean Quatremer says, even as he insists that “it is not the Greeks he meets in the street who are responsible for the problems of the Greek state.”

The Dukakis Center will host three extra-curricular projects in the fall 2015 semester for the principal benefit of the ACT student body.

First, the Center will host screenings of debates by Republican and Democratic candidates for the nomination of their respective parties for the 2016 Presidential election. The screenings will be a prelude to a project designed for US study abroad students who will cast absentee ballots from Thessaloniki in November 2016.

Second, in another, related political project, the Dukakis Center will inaugurate a research project with colleagues at the University Research Institute

 at the University if Macedonia. In the first phase of the project, two students -- one degree candidate, one study abroad student --will study the general phenomenon of voter abstention (apohi in Greek) and organize a workshop for students from ACT and the University of Macedonia. Their findings will inform a presentation Nikos Marantzidis of the University of Macedonia will make with Dukakis Center director David Wisner at a conference on political participation the Center will host during the spring 2016 semester. 

These new projects add to a student-based project currently underway, on "Public Service in the 21st Century."

Finally, during the week of November 23-27, the Dukakis Center and ACT's English program will host a Masterclass in photojournalism for ACT and Anatolia students and alumni with SBALA alumnus Dimitris Bouras. Mr. Bouras will present some of his own photos from Ukraine, Syria, and other conflict zones on Tuesday, December 1.

This will be the second time Dimitris Bouras visits ACT to speak about his photography, the first being in December 2013.

The Dukakis Center inaugurated its series of masterclasses during the spring 2014 semester with a masterclass in and exhibition of environmental photography with Anatolia alumna Chrysa Nikoleri, and a masterclass in documentary making with Christos Nikoleris.

The Dukakis Center was present at the annual Thessaloniki International Symposium organized by the Navarino Network, Sunday, October 18, the theme of which was "The World in 2016 and beyond." 

Dukakis Center director David Wisner moderated two sessions during the day-long event, which featured leading scholars and practitioners in contemporary international affairs. Notably, Wisner presided over a session featuring NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy, Thrasyvoulos "Terry" Stamatopoulos.

The American College of Thessaloniki was one of the co-sponsors of the event, along with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and other local institutions.

A new academic year is beginning at the American College of Thessaloniki and the Dukakis Center is planning another banner year of events and public service initiatives. Politis caught up with Dr. David Wisner, Executive Director of the Dukakis Center, to get the inside story on the many events he has organized at ACT over the years. More

The Dukakis Center hosted a presentation of former US diplomat Brady Kiesling's new book on «17 November», on March 2 at Ianos Bookstore in downtown Thessaloniki.  

The book, entitled "Urban Greek Warriors," chronicles and analyzes the long history of militant revolutionary groups active in Greece during the second half of the twentieth century. The principal focus of the book is 17 November, who conducted terrorist attacks against government and foreign targets -- including assassinations -- from 1967 until 2002, when several members were arrested and eventually put on trial. More

Το νέο επιχειρηματικό τοπίο που διαμορφώνεται στην Ελλάδα από την ανοδική πορεία των startups, οι προσδοκίες που γεννούν οι νεοφυείς επιχειρήσεις, η εθνική δημόσια πολιτική που απαιτείται για την απαγκίστρωση της επιχειρηματικότητας από τις γραφειοκρατικές αγκυλώσεις, ήταν ορισμένα από τα θέματα που συζητήθηκαν στο 2ο   Forum για το Επιχειρείν και την Πολιτική με θέμα «Η Επιχειρηματικότητα στην Ελλάδα: Εξετάζοντας την ευρύτερη εικόνα». More