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And so happened,
that in 1948
Douglas MacArthur
was First Secretary of the Embassy
and later
he became the American Ambassador
and in that capacity,
in 1964
Ambassador MacArthur
appointed me
to the Fulbright Commission.
Well, shortly after I
became
a member
of the board,
I realized
that the finances
of the Commissions were
running down rapidly
because the counterpart funds
that had been used
to fund this program initially
where rapidly running down,
and that the Commission was reduced
to granting just a very few
travel grants,
and that many people actually had thought
that the Commission had closed its doors.
So I consulted my parents and we came up with the idea
that it might be very interesting and useful
if we offered a private scholarship
to young Belgians and Luxembourgers
who would be able to study in any graduate department
of Harvard University.
And we thought it would be useful to
partner with the Fulbright Commission
which would grant
travel grants to the successful
applicants
and would also do the initial screening.
And I brought this up with my board and with Dorothy,
and they all agreed that this would be a good idea.
So then the next thing
that needed to be done
was to make sure that Harvard
would join in this program and make it possible.
So having
graduated
10 years earlier, in 1954,
from Harvard Law School,
I thought it would be useful
to begin
this program
with the Law School
and their
LLM program in particular.
So I went to Cambridge,
got an appointment with dean Griswold,
and this was my first
face-to-face meeting with the dean
because when I was an undergraduate
I followed the unwritten rule
to avoid the dean
as much as possible because a
summons to his office usually
meant rather bad news
for the invitee.
I explained to dean Griswold who I was
and then I explained to him
what the Fulbright program was all about,
with which he was not familiar.
And then dean Griswold said: "Well,
why in the world would any Belgian
want to come to Harvard Law School
and get an LLM degree?"
And then I reminded
dean Griswold that
in 1928,
when he graduated from
Harvard Law School,
a bright young Belgian
was just
finishing his LL.M degree
and his name
was Pierre Wigny,
who at the time of our meeting was the
Belgian Minister of Justice.
and I also said that a number of of other very intelligent Belgians
were also interested in studying at the Harvard Law School. So the dean agreed with our plan and said that of course,
Harvard would have the final say over admissions. So having obtained Harvard's permission, I then returned to Belgium and we were faced
with the rather urgent task of finding a suitable candidate. We obviously didn't have time at that point to set up a search committee and do the kind of interviews that all of you have experienced, we simply
had to find a candidate. So Dorothy and I went over a number of files and we came up with the name of Luc Schuerman,
who had graduated at the top of his class at the Leuven law school and had just finished
spending a year studying law at the university in Rome. So I managed to find Luc and explain to him what our program 0:04:34.590,0:04:38.129 was all about, and he agreed to be our first candidate. And to sweeten the deal, I said that we would provide him,
if he had successfully completed the program, with an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States.
and I had the pleasure of meeting Luc's parents at their home. Luc then kindly invited me to meet with his family
and I also had the pleasure of meeting his lovely wife, Janine.
Luc and Janine went off to Harvard and Luc did brilliantly.
And now we had a successful program, because if the first candidate had failed,
our whole program would have been dead on arrival.
Well, of course,
all of you here and all of the
Boas scholars have been winners and have done very well.
And in fact, the program did so very well, that in fact
a number of the Belgian grantees
went to a number of the graduate schools
at Harvard, including the medical school
and of course the law school,
the school of public health
and also the faculty of arts and science.
A number of these very distinguished Belgians are now actually members of the Belgian Royal Academy.
So having a successful program
ongoing
my parents and I thought
that it might be interesting
to set up a second scholarship
which would be limited to the Harvard Law School
but which would be open to
scholars from what we had
determined to be the small countries of Europe:
Benelux,
Scandinavia, including Iceland,
and Austria and Portugal.
And I think the first Icelander in our program,
Ms. Helwig Olafsdottir,
was the first Icelander ever to go the Harvard Law School.
And of course, we now have
a very distinguished group
of alumni
from these countries
and I'm delighted
that the honorable Imre Gard Reitinger,
President of the Austrian Supreme Court,
has agreed to join your board.