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Newsletter Miami-Florida European Union Center of Excellence - FIU THIS ISSUE VOLUME 3, ISSUE 12 FEBRUARY 2011 Lech Walesa, Lech Walesa visits FIU Former President of Poland visits FIU .....1/2 On February 11, the FIU community wel- ers view him as the liberator of Poland, a comed President Lech Walesa with record fighter or democracy and greeted him enthu- Modern Italian Art in the enthusiasm. All 480 seats of the new SIPA siastically with standing ovations. “Thank Frost Art Museum...….3 Ruth K. and Shepard Broad Auditorium were you. Now I have to work really hard to filled more than a half an hour before the achieve the same appreciation,” smiles the start of the lecture entitled "Poland and the former president. Islam in Europe….…....4 World in the Age of Globalization: Values and Walesa began his remarks with reflections Challenges", which was part of both the on post-war Europe, displaying an authentic Broad Lecture Series and the Polish Lecture sense of Polish humor even when he talked The Euro Crisis and Series. President about the gravest The German Model…..5 Walesa attracted tragedies in Polish standing room history. There is still The Persistent Problem only crowds, in- a tangible sentiment cluding a couple of sorrow when he of Trafficking in hundred more recalls how his Women……….………...5 people in the country fell to the overflow rooms sphere of Soviet in- Women in post-Wall watching Walesa fluence after World Eastern Europe and on the screen. War II. It should not Global Prosperity …....6 The Noble Peace have happened, he Prize recipient says, “for we really Gender throughout the gazed out into the are textbook democ- Ages…………………....7 crowd and said, rats: If you have two with his famous Poles, you have good humor: “I three parties.” His Celebrating 25 years of am honestly sur- words continued to Spain EU’s Member- prised that so The Honorable Lech Walesa: Former President of Poland visibly move the au- ship…………………...8/9 many of you Founder of the Lech Walesa Institute dience. came to see a The former labor Announcements…….10 politician.” The crowd, made up of students, leader devoted a significant portion of his faculty, and community members from all speech to the transformation of his country - MEUCE at FIU has walks of life, smiled and clapped. into a Western democracy. He cited the pa- moved to the new To many in the audience, Walesa is a mod- pacy of John Paul II, which began in 1978, as SIPA building ern-day hero. Nine years before the fall of the a beacon of hope for all Poles and a great Berlin Wall, Walesa led strikes in Poland, inspiration for those struggling to resist Com- - Two-day EU conference forcing the Socialist government into allowing munist oppression. At the same time, the Keynote Address: free labor unions. When the Soviet Union former Solidarity leader had somewhat criti- Luc Véron increased its pressure on the Polish govern- cal remarks for his contemporaries and archi- ment, the leader of Solidarność (Solidarity tects of political change in the late 1980s, - Local Florida Euro Movement) was imprisoned in 1981 and most notably Mikhail Gorbachev. Walesa Challenge Competition awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two years argued that Gorbachev’s efforts to implement 2011 later. In 1990, Walesa became the first de- a policy of incremental modernization were mocratically elected president of the Republic doomed from the start: “There is simply no of Poland and supervised the country’s politi- way to reform Communism,” …you remove cal and economic transformation. one element and the whole system comes miamieuc.fiu.edu While the younger guests in the audience apart. Gorbachev tried, and he failed brutally. know his face from history books, many oth- He did not preserve Communism. FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 2 Lech Walesa visits FIU (cont’d) He did not preserve the Soviet Un- ion. He did not preserve the War- saw Pact.” Walesa’s passion and charisma filled the auditorium. However, his message is not that radical change is a universal rem- edy but that failure should never result in resignation: “It is natural: We will encounter failures when we change the world.“ Walesa ad- dressed the complex dynamics that have replaced the relatively simple balance of the two superpower camps and called for a period of global reconsideration. He sug- gested that the younger genera- tions and the most brilliant minds should combine their efforts to de- termine where the world was Lech Walesa was the keynote speaker at the inauguration of FIU’s most modern lecture headed. Directed at the many theater. The Ruth K. and Shepard Broad Auditorium has a capacity of about 480 seats and young Americans in the audience Features sophisticated technology. he says: “Do not forget this, you are the superpower!” about what kind of economy and date on which Poland’s former Walesa turned to the role of the democracy they desire in the long President visited FIU to talk about EU in initiating change and taking run. “People nowadays think less liberation could not have been more up the mantle of global leadership. about democracy than they used fitting: Only hours before he The EU, he explained, is currently to,” Walesa mused. “But China is stepped up to the microphone on in a challenging situation, having to coming up impressively fast. If we February 11, long-standing dictator reconcile its expansive ambitions do not prepare ourselves for this Hosni Mubarak had been ousted by with the implications of a substan- kind of competition, who knows— the people of Egypt who desired tial economic and monetary crisis. maybe we will have to join China at freedom—just like Eastern Europe- Walesa recommended that Europe- some point,” Walesa joked. Much to ans did some twenty odd years ear- ans should make up their minds the amusement of his audience, he lier. (S. Kube) also has a piece of logical advice for his fellow Europeans: “Get to work and make at least twenty chil- dren per household!” Walesa made sure to also em- phasize how much has been achieved since the fall of the Iron Curtain. “We have so many coun- tries and languages, and the num- ber of borders has been decreasing so rapidly and constantly,” he mar- veled. “If my father raised from his grave to find that there are no sol- diers at the border shared by Ger- many and Poland,” the former activ- ist insists, “he would instantly suffer from a second heart attack.” After his formal remarks, Walesa patiently answered questions about Morris Broad represented the Broad family his personal life as well as about President Mark B. Rosenberg welcomed as sponsors of the new lecture hall greater issues of world politics. The Walesa to FIU’s main campus FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 3 Modern Italian Art in the Frost Museum that this wonderful selection of excit- ing and sometimes bold artworks will attract many visitors from near and far,” commented the Museum’s Di- rector Dr. Carol Damian. However, the Frost did not only upgrade its modern art department over the holidays. Visitors are also invited to take a long and close look at one truly magnificent work of Ba- roque painting: “Alexander’s Lion Hunt” by Flemish old master Peter Paul Rubens. “It is the generous loan from a Miami art collector,” ex- plains Dr. Damian. “In fact, because of its enormous size it had to be taken down twenty-six stories with the aid of a crane before we were able to put it on display.” The effort was certainly worth it. The Frost Art Museum’s director Dr. Carol Damian Is delighted to host the Gran Torino “Alexander’s Lion Hunt” is a lavish Exhibition reference work of early seventeenth- century European art and the kind of Giorgo Griffa) as well as those who It is a spectacular addition to the artwork that one would encounter in made their names in the past fifteen Miami art scene: FIU’s Patricia and the Louvre or Prado. years (such as Luigi Stoisa and Phillip Frost Art Museum now exhib- Rubens’ masterpiece will help Paolo Grassino). There could its a selection of art works from the to foster the FIU-Frost’s reputation hardly be more variety in the “Gran Italian city of Torino. as a hot spot for art in Miami. “We Torino” exhibition, which consists of The exhibition opened at the are on a good way,” says Dr. thirty art works including paintings, end January and will run through mid Damian. “From 2009 to last year, the sculptures, video art and installa- -April. It features works by two number of visitors swelled from tions. “This exhibit is unique to Mi- groups of artists from Torino: those 40,000 to 60,000.” With this year’s ami. We felt that modern art from who established themselves in the sensational additions, another surge Italy was somewhat underrepre- decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and in popularity would come as no sur- sented in Miami. We are confident 1980s (like Alighiero Boetti and prise. (S. Kube) FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 4 Islam in Europe experienced an influx of people of Islamic faith from former colonies in Africa and Asia, respectively. The story behind Germany’s large Mus- lim minority is different again: In order to rebuild the country in the aftermath of World War Two, the state invited guest workers from The question of how to fully inte- Turkey. When Germany’s grate Muslims into mainstream “economic miracle” came to a halt European society is one of the hot- in the 1960s, the Turks stayed— test topics on the political agenda in and they were the first to lose their many EU countries.

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