Institute Directors Make Working Visit to the United States
Washington, 6 April, 2011 – Discussions on cooperation with the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a meeting with the former American Secretary of State were important aspects of a recent trip to the United States made by the director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Daniel Herman.
Madeleine Albright asked the Institute’s director for help and cooperation in preparing a book she is writing on her father Josef Korbel, a former Czechoslovak diplomat and a professor at the University of Colorado. During a recent visit to Prague, she had visited the Institute and the Security Services Archive, where she had examined a number of archive materials. In Washington, Ms Albright subsequently greeted Daniel Herman and his advisor Pavel Žáček, who informed her of the international scale of the Institute’s activity and the possibility of using the experience it has gained from coming to terms with the totalitarian past in cooperation with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. The former U.S. Secretary of State is the chairman of this institution.
At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where the Institute’s representatives were received at the invitation of the Holocaust Memorial, discussions were subsequently held on extending further cooperation, particularly in terms of specifying the area of archive materials that will be the subject of digitisation and other specific points concerning the fulfilment of a mutual cooperation agreement.
The Institute’s representatives also had a brief meeting with the Archbishop and Washington Metropolitan Bishop, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl at the Catholic University of America. They acquainted him with some issues concerning the process of overcoming the totalitarian past in the Czech Republic.
Daniel Herman and Pavel Žáček also visited the United States’ National Archives and Record Administration, where they were apprised of the operation of this renowned institution and where they also studied some archive materials concerning the Second World War and the post-war period, which have recently been made available.
In Boston (8 April, 2011), the Institute’s representatives met with three members of the Institute’s Academic Council at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Cold War Studies. They comprised professors Mark Kramer (Harvard University), Igor Lukeš (Boston University) and Michael Kraus (Middlebury College). The subject of this detailed meeting concerned preparations for an upcoming meeting of the Institute’s Academic Council, as well as the tasks of the Academic Council as an advisory body for the director, communication within the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, cooperation with other committees of the Institute’s director, the form of internal and external evaluation for the research department and the publishing activity of the Institute, as well as the possibilities of cooperation with American universities. All the participants agreed on the irreplaceable role of the Academic Council in accordance with Act No. 181/2007 of the Collection of Laws and on the need to impart the experiences of renowned American academic institutions in Central Europe. The Institute’s representatives were then acquainted with the organisation of Harvard University and they visited a number of lecture halls as well as other university facilities.