Mendelsohn Ambassadorial Lecture Series Debuts
6/8/2009
Ambassador Martin Palouš, the permanent representative and ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to the United Nations, delivered the inaugural address of the Mendelsohn Ambassadorial Lectures at Brooklyn College last week.
At the well-attended event, Martin Mendelsohn introduced Ambassador Palouš, saying, "He personifies history, as a signer of Charter 77, as a colleague of Václav Havel, as a man who has devoted his life to achieving freedom and dignity for all mankind."
The series was conceived and endowed by international trade and commerce lawyer Martin Mendelsohn, '63, with the support of Provost William A. Tramontano, Dean of Undergraduate Studies Donna Wilson, and Chairperson of Political Science Sally Bermanzohn. The lecture was presented by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies.
Ambassador Palouš was one of the first to sign Charter 77, a 1977 manifesto calling on the Czechoslovakian government to honor various covenants and accords it had signed—including its own constitution—to protect human, economic, cultural, and civil rights. He later served as spokesman for the signatories when they were persecuted. Palous holds doctorates in chemistry, political science, and public international law and has taught at Charles University in Prague...
In his talk, "Trans-Atlantic Relations at the Beginning of the 21st Century: A Central European Point of View," Ambassador Palouš conveyed the hopes of former Soviet-bloc countries and the hurdles facing them. "There is a sense of discontinuity in our time," said Palouš, "what matters in times of transformation, are not only changes that can be stated as facts, but changed perceptions."
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| From left: Provost William Tramontano, Ambassador Palous, Martin Mendelsohn, and Dean Donna Wilson |
"Crisis is word that is very popular these days," he continued, "Crisis is always an opportunity to restore order and take up new beginnings." Palouš spoke at length about the position of the Czech Republic and other small nations in the post-Soviet era, and of the need for NATO to be geographically contiguous with the European Union and to engage Russia in dialogue.
After the lecture, Martin Mendelsohn said, "I am delighted that the College was receptive to doing this, and that Martin Palouš, a great man, was the inaugural speaker. This is the kind of thing that will help students and the College. It enables the College to take advantage of its location. We are so close to the U.N. We should be reaching out in ways that give our students a glimpse of the wider world."
Mendelsohn began his legal career in the former U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and subsequently worked at the Department of Justice, where he created a unit, now the Office of Special Investigation, for the purpose of finding and prosecuting Nazi war criminals. He went on to represent Holocaust survivors' claims against Swiss banks and Austrian and German firms. He is the external counsel to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. For the last three decades, in private practice, he has represented major U.S. corporations seeking to establish markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2007, for his lifetime of legal work, he received the BCAA Distinguished Achievement Award. Recently he gave back to the College by endowing the Martin, '63, and Syma R., '64, Mendelsohn Scholarship. He is also a member of the Pre-Law Advisory Council, which advises the College and its faculty of developments in the field of law. The Mendelsohn Ambassadorial Lecture series is his latest Brooklyn College project.
"The opportunity to engage in dialogue with ambassadors will enrich our own conversations about the intersection of the local and global," says Dean Wilson, "especially in addressing such complex, interconnected issues as the economic crisis, the challenge of democracy, and climate change."
