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Dr. Vincent Addresses Czech Senate

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Dr. Vincent addressing the Czech Senate
Dr. Vincent addressing the Czech Senate

What should be anticipated by a Fulbright Scholar?  Well, the honor generally means either doing research or teaching (sometimes both) over a period of up to one year during which the awardee is attached to a foreign institution. On occasion a Fulbrighter is asked to provide a guest lecture, speak for a local organization or at a U.S. Consulate, or maybe serve as a curriculum adviser for a university. This was largely what Dr. Paul Vincent anticipated while serving as a visiting professor at Poland’s Jagiellonian University. Interestingly, while he’s teaching a course on Nazi Germany to masters-level students from throughout Europe (from Lithuania to Portugal), his chief contact during weekly office hours has been as mentor for those Keene State students currently studying away in Kraków. He’s learned that the concept of office hours is not nearly so evolved in Poland as it is in America.  (Because he has no office, he meets students each Wednesday at a local restaurant.

One thing Professor Vincent never anticipated “in my wildest dreams” was an invitation he received in early April. It seems the Senate of the Czech Republic, working with the Institute of History in the Czech Academy of Sciences, decided to host a one-day conference marking the 70th anniversary of V-E Day (Victory in Europe). They landed speakers from Germany and Russia; however, needing a historian to address the American perspective on the topic, someone from the Senate contacted the U.S. Embassy in Prague, which in turn contacted the Czech Fulbright Commission. Dr. Vincent’s name came up as an American Fulbrighter teaching in Kraków. “Addressing the Czech Parliament on the close of World War II was certainly not on my radar! I initially thought they must have emailed the wrong ‘Paul Vincent.’ It is, of course, the Fulbright Scholarship that triggered the invitation—plus the accident of residing in Europe during a momentous anniversary.”

The invitation asked Dr. Vincent to address the Czech Parliament in the Senate Chamber on Tuesday, May 19. The conference, “On the Threshold of Freedom:  V-E Day 1945,” also includes presentations by scholars from Russia, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Professor Vincent spoke on the topic “The Victors’ Views 70 Years After – USA.”

In commenting on the invitation, Dr. Vincent said, “I was both honored and horrified to receive it; I’ve never addressed such an august body as a national parliament. Indeed, the only senate I’m really familiar with is at Keene State College. Over the course of 30 years, I rarely speak there.” But he came to relish the unexpected opportunity. “With the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia initiated by the Munich Conference in September 1938, that country became Hitler’s first victim—almost a full year before the Second World War broke out in Europe. I’m intrigued by the conference title,” he said. “Why ‘Threshold of Freedom?’ In a very important respect, when one thinks back to 1945, it took 45 more years for Czechoslovakia to cross that threshold.”

Follow Up:

On Wednesday morning (May 20), we received this note from Dr. Vincent:

“Yesterday’s conference was little short of incredible. I think I delivered a good paper; it certainly generated some good questions. But I also learned a good deal about the history of Prague and Czechoslovakia during the final weeks of the war. … As my life has evolved of late into a series of unexpected happenings, I should not have been surprised to learn Monday evening that I’d been scheduled, together with the conference’s Russian historian, to appear Tuesday evening on a popular one-hour television program.”

Here’s a link to the TV program, though it helps if you speak Czech. The discussion is held in English, but the translator’s overdubbed voice makes it difficult to follow.

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