INTRODUCTION
527
songs in Eastern and Central Europe, and today is generally considered to
be dead, like the intellectuals who once spoke it. But it was the language
in which I spoke to my father, and [ hope that you will indulge my need
to see that language kept alive at a conference on Eastern and Central
European literature. And so [ want to welcome you also in Yiddish:
-01?~ 1r:n~il ~
lY"T
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UYll U?Yll '1
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[My dear gllests,
I
wallt to cOllvey to YOIl the hearifelt welcol'I"Ie oj
0111'
own
professors alld stlldellts. We hope that YOIl will have all fIljoyable stay with liS
dllring this cOIiferellce.
I
wallt to express
11Iy
OWII hope that YOIl will help, as
writers, scholars, alld teachers, to ellSllre that the world I,vill 1I0t Jorget what
happened over there to my people, my lallgllage alld its books.]
Thank you. Have a wonderful conference. It 's now my great pleasure
to introduce to you the President of Rutgers University, my boss, Francis
Lawrence.
Francis
Lawrence: [
have just come back from Poland, where I made
one of those whirlwind three-day visits to W arsaw and Krakow that
qualify so many Americans as instant experts on Central and Eastern Eu–
rope. [ cannot say that the universities there struck me as a revoluti onary
intellectual force for social change . As institutions, they are best equipped
for the preservation of intellectual traditions. [ participated in the
dedication ceremonies for the American Studies program of the Univer–
sity of Warsaw , visited the Media Resources Center that the Rutgers
Journalism Institute is establishing in Warsaw to support the creation of
free, responsible news media, and gave a keynote address at a conference
on local government reforms. I was asked to speak on the leadership role
of universities in developing participatory democracy, so, in typically
brash American style, I urged the representatives of more than a dozen
Central and Eastern European nations to consider the merits of the land–
grant model of higher education and its role in the economic and social
development of the United States.
Land-grant institutions such as Rutgers transformed American society
by pioneering open, democratic access to higher education coupled with
aggressive outreach to the people of the state. They originally focused on
progress in agriculture but by now have been broadened to include a
