On Monday I had my first politics class with Dr. Lengle. Our class meets in the Charles University Economics Faculty (a classroom building) near Wenceslas Square. It take about 20 minutes to get there by subway from our dorm. Unfortunately, our lecture hall is unairconditioned and Prague has been hotter than usual this summer. Other than the temperature the Economics Faculty is a very nice setting to study in.
In class we’ve begun by building a model of a democratic state, which we will later apply to the United States. Our reading and discussion groups have also spent quite a bit of time in comparative studies. With so many countries represented in our group the information has a more personal dimension.
Already we have had two guest lectures in the afternoons. The better of the two was by Eliska Coolidge, a former White House staffer originally from Czechoslovakia. Although she came to talk about etiquette, her personal history was more interesting. Her grandfather was a major banker in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. He refused several times to sell his third of Czechoslovakia’s largest newspaper to the Nazis and was shot for his resistance.
When Coolidge was eight her family fled the Communists, leaving behind their castle and respected place in society. In 1950 they stepped off a ship in New York City where the Columbus Day parade was in progress. The day Coolidge landed in America she went to the top of the Empire State Building.
Although her family had arrived in America with nothing, Coolidge went on to graduate from Georgetown University and work under five presidents. When Communism fell in Czechoslovakia, Coolidge resigned her job and began making plans to return. She now advises young Czech diplomats on protocol and is running for the Czech Senate.
Our lecture hall.
Discussion group. Filling out a chart comparing the governments of our respective countries. Our teaching assistant (left) is a PhD student from Georgetown.