My New Article in Miami Ohio Luxembourg

I am happy to let the world know about the publication of my most recent published article (in French): Universalisme et particularisme, in the excellent French journal Cahiers Français, septembre-octobre 2009.

It is the very first one I publish as a professor of Political Science at Miami University. I found it peculiar to publish it while I was settling in Luxembourg, the most multicultural country of Europe in a way, and in a way that those used to multicultural theories would find surprising.

For those who wondered why I had disappeared from this blog, the reason is simple: in less than 4 months I changed countries 4 times — coming back from the US in May, going back in June, coming back to France on August, and then leaving to Luxembourg four days after. Since then, I am well and alive in Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, I have switched from Georgetown University where I was a Fulbright-Shuman fellow and the University in Versailles where I was tenured as professor of political science to my Summer semester at Middlebury French School and then to Miami University (Ohio, not Florida, for those who would not know) where I am now professor of political science and Dean.

My Deanship consisting in being the head of the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center, I settled in Luxembourg where the center is.

And where I wrote on universalism and particularism, a topic I seemed well equipped by my changes of the last months to deal with.

 

A Bastille Day in Vermont

Like every summer, I am back to Vermont and to Middlebury College French School, and there I spent another Bastille Day today.  It will probably be a long time until I come back after this summer: from August on, I will have a new job, which will not allow me to enjoy the summers of Vermont, as I have for the last 7 years. to say the truth, this summer is not very summery: a cold, grey and rainy weather seems to help me not having too many regrets about not coming back.

I am not even mentioning the fact that I am sharing my small  College apartment with a French family–a little bit too French for me and with two young kids who are not of the calmest kind. This also, I shall not regret.

For years, the French School has honored the tradition of a  big Bastille day picnic on the lawn of the « Chateau » which we have for the summer (for some pics of our castle,  http://www.hhirschmannltd.com/portfolio/portfolio-win1-322w.html) but due to the rainy weather and cuts in the catering budget, for the first time in decades, we did not have it.

We were able to maintain an « independence ball » last Saturday, which celebrates both the American 4th of July and the French Bastille day. It was quite a nice party–there was even free beer (a fact which is also becoming  rarer under the pressure of cuts in the budget and the increasing difficulty to organize events with alcohol in Vermont).

On the 4th of July, we often sing the American national anthem without the words or in French–this is hilarious for our American students who pledge to only speak French here, and so cannot honor in their language their anthem. For some reason, we did not do it this time.

But we did sing the Marseillaise at lunch time with all the students today. Guess what? I was the lead singer, and it turned to be a very moving little event when a colleague from Lebanon kindly backed me up. A French man,  a Lebanese citizen, crowds of American students singing the Marseillaise–I must admit there was something there.

However, there is always a strange detail  for Americans:  French people seem  very unpatriotic in their demeanor because the sense of pride in the nation is seldom  expressed through formal demonstrations such as standing up for the anthem (except at soccer games). Every Bastille day here, our students see a few French people standing up for the song, but most of the crowd staying seated. They are always a bit concerned about the proper behavior they should adopt on singing or hearing the Marseillaise.

To stand or not to stand? That is the question.

 

Should we hold Obama responsible for new racism?

or…  Does the victim make the criminal?

I feel uneasy when I read in the newspapers this morning that since Obama has been elected President of the United States, racist and anti-gay movements are more present in the US, voicing their concerns or even committing criminal acts more often. My uncertainty comes from the fact that it sounds as if the President, being black, was the cause of, if not responsible for, the rise of racism in his country. The newspaper says: “with the election of a black leader, racists feel invaded by non-white”. I wonder how we would react if we were to read the same thing, just put in the other way round: “with the previous white presidents, (and for the sake of being nastily balanced, since it is about one black president that the argument is built, let us add: ‘especially the previous one’) racists and anti-gay felt at home in their country.” Most of us would feel that it is grossly unfair (even if the leftists among us might play laughingly with the idea). But in all logics, it has exactly the same meaning: with black president, racists are not happy and feel it; with white presidents, racists are happy and feel it. If we fail to recognize such a phrasing as what we mean, we only suggest that we say something else, such as: “it is not racism, but something about the president (ie. the fact that he is black) that is the cause of the new visibility of hate movements.”

Paralleling the election of a black president and racism is exactly doing the same as paralleling rape and the right of women to walk freely in the streets: it is taking the problem the wrong way, and leading to very unpleasant (though, hopefully unwanted) consequences, such as: women should not walk freely in the streets, African Americans should not seek election.

A far fairer writing of the analysis of hate-movements in the US under a black president would be: “racists express themselves more openly and violently to fight the historical event of the election of the first American black president.”

 

Before the Internet

We are just a day from the European elections, and I am enjoying the hospitality of an old Castle in the suburbs of Luxembourg City. I am eager to find out the results of the ballot. There is a computer in my room, but like many old machines, it is just impossible to have it properly work on a newer system. The first site I try freezes the browser. I have brought my laptop with me, but I cannot have it log on the wireless system. I will not have an informational quick fix this morning over the Internet. I have to explore more traditional media: I still can give a try to radio and TV. Radio is ruled out: you have to know the news channels are if you do not want to be drowned in poor music and stupid commercials. My guesswork is then narrowed to TV. I am enchanted with the diversity of the channels I find. I pick the Germans, the Belgians—I am amused to watch a TV that is in fact no more than filmed radio, an astute way of dealing with local communities broadcasting—and the French. After a little search, I finally reach the French Public TV. I still have to wait for the commercials to inflict their low-key messages on me until the socialist speaker, Benoit Hamon, appears. He is obviously chocked by the defeat of his party—the first figure I grab is its meager 13,5% in the Parisian area. It takes me a quarter of an hour to get the full figures (and the total 16,5% of the socialist party in the country). Surfing of the different channels, I also get some news from the Belgian results. I have to wait until 8AM—fortunately, I am not in a hurry this morning—to have a more complete picture. If I had been on the Internet, in less than 5 minutes, I would have got all the figures I needed, at a time convenient for me. If I had been home, too: I would have listened to the radio while taking off. One thing though is to be said for traditional media, is that at the same time, I hear from the Lebanese elections and the death of Omar Bongo. More than I asked for, but definitely good to know.

I reckon a medium is only good in its context. If you are in familiar settings, radio is convenient a versatile. TV is efficient but limited in any context. The Internet is perfect, but the risk is to know—well and fast—only about what you want to hear from. Fast, efficient, unopened to surprise.

As a columnist, I should also say a word about the written press: in the US, I would have found the Washington Post (the one newspaper I read) at my door in the early morning. However, I doubt that even the Post would have paid much urgent attention to the European elections. In France, I would have had to wait until noon, when the mail is delivered or to go and buy a newspaper somewhere. Whatever the medium, you still have to go by national contingencies.

 

My American neighborhood

I mentioned the other day how much I liked my neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, when it turns Mediterranean at the first touch of the summer heat. Arlington is a suburb of DC, right next to the capital city, on the other bank of the Potomac. As a matter of fact, it just takes a bridge from Washington (the key bridge), to reach Arlington. I live—still for a week—in the courthouse neighborhood, which actually shelters the courthouse and a jail. That alone would not speak highly for the area, and when I landed here, I was slightly uneasy at the idea of being surrounded by the dullest state operations. My first walks around my building and passed the main entrance did not improve the first impression. At the very best, I would walk around new condos, nice in their own neat anonymous way, but without particular charm or interest of any sort. At the very worst, I would find constructions in progress, parking lots and the ambience of abandonment that goes with them.

I was not unhappy though. Finding myself in the midst of this concrete forest felt so typically American to my European habits. The location was particularly convenient too: cleaners around the corner, supermarkets, lots of restaurants, and even a movie theater just downstairs, right next to the metro station. This, and the amenities of the residence (including a gym and a pool on the roof), was sufficient to please me. I had not realized that the real interest of the area were not to be found around the main entrance, but rather when I would go through the back door. Once this discovery made, and for the—too short—months I spent there, I became a local explorer of sorts, chasing for the treasures that my first errands had not allowed me to discover.

Right off the rear entrance, there was an American restaurant, soon replaced by a sport bar. I went to the former, to have my load of corn bread, and have never cared to find out how the latter fares. I have more regret to have ignored the Thai restaurant next to it. But the two jewels of these immediate surroundings are a Lebanese Restaurant, matching the best food I have had in Lebanon, and one of the best steak places in the DC area. Its façade is so anonymous that it took me a while to understand that it was a restaurant, and I would not have suspected that it was actually a good one, if I had not been brought there by friends from Washington. On my way to the metro, or to the movie theater, I pass a Korean convenience store where more than once, I have picked Saporo beer, donuts or ice-cream.

Two main roads border my place, roughly parallel before slowly drifting away to the North: Wilson and Clarendon bvd. The North route takes me to Georgetown—I have walked there a few times, it takes me about 40 minutes. I cross a street, pass by a 24/24 drugstore, and find an area of small buildings crowded with a series of restaurant. I have checked a couple of times the local café, which enjoys an excellent reputation, but there is always a line, even when the place is apparently not crowded. It did not carry donuts, breakfast items (that is what I would tend to use a café for) were not fabulously original, and I could not identify for sure the different sorts of salads and the kind of sandwiches they were serving. A little further on, I would pass a Chinese place (that I never checked, having many other Asian food eateries on my top list) a rather expensive south American place, where I celebrated a new position with superb cocktails, a couple of shops (including a not so spectacular stationery place) a very good Mexican fast food that I patronized more than once with pleasure and a Post office. The atmosphere, like the one in my building, is mostly of a young urban professional type, with a touch of ordinary people. Across the boulevard a little market place and an Office Depot complete the shopping experience one could have in my immediate surroundings and a Wendy’s accommodates my regular American fast-food needs.

From there, I would walk in an indecisively middle class area of small buildings, some with rather charming gardens. In the little local mall one finds the best Pho place in the area, which made more than once my days in the winter) a burger place now famous for having among its patrons president Obama, and a café. More to the North, the ambiance tends to be more run-down, with a rather sad and ugly Safeway supermarket before improving and becoming all tall glass and concrete buildings, in more corporate settings. One finds a well-known Asian fusion restaurant (where I ate) a well-known Italian restaurant (where I did not eat). In one of these corporate-type buildings, one finds a remarkable dim-san place—by far the place where I have been eating the most often, and where I said good bye, in one ultimate lunch, to my Washingtonian life, and my Virginia residency. Then, you reach the Potomac and, off the Key bridge—the one leading to Georgetown— a track that leads to the Teddy Roosevelt Ireland and memorial.

The South route, leading to the neighborhood of Clarendon and Ballston (too far to be easily reached by foot, but where there is what has been for years now my favorite local American restaurant) is quintessentially different. Buildings are smaller, the atmosphere more day-to-day life with upper middle class families from the nearby condos having a walk from time to time with their kids or their pets (and often with both of them). One can walk south on Clarendon or Wilson boulevards: the roads are parallel. A first remarkable joint is a Five Burgers place, a burger chain, where I took my daughter when she visited me in February and where President Obama (obviously hooked on burgers) took his staff in May (but not in the Arlington joint).  I have also used the nearby Papa John’s Pizza place, but definitively, they are more used to delivering pizzas than to taking orders from walk-in customers. No need to go there, just pick your phone. A couple of blocks further on, we are already at the border between the courthouse and Clarendon neighborhoods, where a paradise-like supermarket welcomes once or twice the week the yuppie I have apparently become with organic and high-quality food as well as bread and wine. However, I would rather buy my bottles from the nearby Winery, where I have found the best crispy white wine of Virginia—a good relief from years of fake woody taste that had corrupted American Chardonnays. As for bread, whenever my ordinary ration of bagels would not suffice, I could go to the Pain quotidien, of more Belgian than French inspiration, where they sell “baguettes” which are in fact more the traditional loaf we call “pain” (loaf, bread) or “flute” (sometimes, baguettes are called flutes too). In the very same area, I will not say much of Harry’s an American food restaurant slightly expensive and without either charm or problem. I would on the contrary underline the glorious presence of my second favorite American place: a Cheesecake factory where portions of greasy food are madly too big, and the cheesecake is definitely good. I bought once one to go, and had it for dessert along with a sweet white Jurançon wine. A mall accommodates a curious place dedicated to anything that helps you to properly put your things somewhere: the storage store. I bought there many curious items, including clips for socks (so that pairs do not get lost in the laundry) and an especially designed case that avoids wrinkling shirts in the luggage when you travel. I also went more than once to the local Barnes and Noble though I am ashamed to admit that I have never patronized the independent bookstore just off my street (I still cannot understand why).

Pushing off to the Clarendon Metro station, I find two remarkable places in an area that I have hardly explored: the Silver diner, and its old vintate décor where I once enjoyed a delicious ice-cream on brownie, with a gloriously good looking friend, and the Hard times café which specializes in Chili in a more Western ambiance. They serve it on their puffy corn bread, and it is damned good.

 

A short philosophy of glasses

Like many intellectuals, I try to lead a life away from commonplaces. There is one I have not been able to avoid however: playing the role of the short-eyesight intellectual. Spectacles have been part of my life for over 30 years. I have lived twice more with glasses on my nose, than without. I even remember the first day I wore my first ones in class. It was a day of laughing at me and teasing, mostly kindly teasing me, among my peers. I could well appreciate the fun of having some new appendix on my nose. Some girls giggled a little too much also. But, that, I was still too young to figure out that it might not totally be about my glasses.

I am also falling for the commonplace of the pusillanimous intellectual: laser surgery came at a rather late stage of my life, but anyway I would not have tried it. As for contact lenses, I cannot even bear the thought of touching my eyes.

It has been over a year now that a strange phenomenon has affected me: I could not read with my glasses on any longer and this fact put me in the weird situation of having to take them off to see. What had helped me for decades was now an impediment. I could hardly get used to the idea.

I soon learned that I was far from being a single case on earth, and that needing different glasses to see from a distance and at close range was a perfectly identified sign of getting old. Progressive lenses have even been invented to give this problem the right fix. So I went for the progressive (and extremely expensive) lenses. It is often said that it takes time to adjust to them. Depending on where you look (close of distant range) you must not use the same areas of the lenses, otherwise your perception becomes distorted and fuzzy. For once, I was no commonplace glasses person. In less than half a day, adjusting my sight to the different areas of my glasses had become a reflex. I am so used to seeing the world in a blurry way that any time it happened to me because I was not looking through the right area of my glasses I just adjusted without minding the least and giving any thought to it.

When I was a professor of philosophy, I used to tell my students that spectacles were the most philosophical tools. I had never had any difficulty to understand Descartes’ idea that you cannot be so sure of anything in the world (at any rate, until, for Descartes, you discover God) for even the simple perception is deceptive. I just had to take off my glasses to see a very different world. So what was the “real” world? The artificial one I saw through my spectacles, or the fuzzy one that I hardly grasp without them? Every time I gave this example, all the glasses bearers in the class felt justified, and grasped the basis of the Cartesian radical doubt.

Philosophe aux Lunettes - Giordano Luca (1632-1705), Fa Presto (dit)

Have I learned a philosophical lesson in my brand new glasses-condition? While regular glasses would be Cartesian, changing for progressive lenses would take us to Humian regions since in Hume’s philosophy people are driven by their habits and ideas triggered  by repetition: I still take off my spectacles when I want to read, and then put them back when I realize that it is better with them than without. Also, I have enriched this old conviction that philosophy is about knowing where to look. Now, it is not where to look in the world, but where to look in my glasses. That is what Kant says in the Critique of the Pure Reason after a fashion.

 

Do not abuse the French Telecoms!

While I was randomly surfing the Web, I stumbled upon an amusing post released a couple of months ago on the blog “live and uncensored” dealing with the daily adventures of a young American in Paris. It is substantial, slightly whiny and depressed, but in the overall distanced in a funny way.

Much of what is related is true—yes, it happens that buildings have no elevators; yes nearly everything seems to be closed on long stretching boring Sundays. Yes people tend to consider that you are a Martian if you do not do things as they are used to. Of course, there is room for properly deciphering these facts. An apartment without elevator is just a cheaper one (which of course does not mean “cheap”, just not obscenely expensive). It is true also that French are judgmental animals. Guess what? It happens to French too. If you do not belong to the same area, you are bound to look weird on many occasions to the indigenous. It happens to me all the time and I have been French for decades. OK, it happens all the more when you are dressed like an American (casual and comfortable, a baseball cap is terminal mistake); I have lots of American outfits that I dare wear in France, I know how it feels (comfortable, casual and looking weird in the eyes of the locals—with whom I am supposed to belong). On Sundays, stores are closed, it is perfectly correct. Sunday closure for commercial activities is actually a legal requirement, and French are adamant to the “repos dominical” (Sunday break). However, when you know better, you realize that many little joints are opened, especially in the morning, and they are actually the best ones (it takes to know that there are other places to shop than supermarkets in France). When something is opened (not always, so), it actually takes ages to find food—do not tell me, that is my story, not in France, but in the US. Grocery shopping is exhausting just because I do not know where things are (and it did not help that I did not know how to pronounce “aisle”) what they are, and how I can substitute the products I am used to with the unknown ones that are available around.

There is one mistake though: Angela (the name of my blogger) reports that it takes about a month to get a full connection to the Internet in France, and compares this situation to the two days it took her in the US. While it is true that in France, getting an Internet package takes too long, it is not always that better in the US, and it is far more expensive. Here in DC, Verizon took FOUR weeks to get installed (the goofiest aspect being that I live just across the street from Verizon headquarters). Comcast, that I finally elected, required “only” two weeks, but costs… $120 per month for a basic subscription—to be compared to the 30€ it costs me in France (which is about $45) for an extended service that includes free international calls. I do not even mention the $400 service fees to start with which do not exist in France…

When we compare our experiences in different countries, we have to take into account the difference in scales. Before settling down for a few months in a big urban area in the US, I had always been under the impression that Americans were nicer and more efficient in commercial services and usually more polite in their daily life. Now, I see on a daily basis that nobody says “hello” in the elevator or at the Gym but the foreigners, and that it takes weeks and hundreds of dollars to get connected to the Internet and watch television. It is enough to have been lead to some nuances in my judgment.

 

Unskilled commuters

“Wow, look at that guy!” “That guy” is me, while the doors of the DC metro hit me in the back. The car is packed with a weekend crowd and on the track a young man who has prudently decided to pass his turn and wait for the next train is amazed to see me being pushed in by the closing doors. He cannot help sharing his astonishment in a loud voice with his buddy. I am no less amazed at his remark and I realize he must not be a local. It is all a matter of perception:  it would take a far frailer person than me to actually risk being hurt to any degree by the doors. But DC is a touristy city, and many Americans discover underground public transportation when they come over. They are easily surprised by the many events of public commuting life. Even if the transportation network cannot compete with one I am used to in the Parisian area, it is still a decent one, and entails the normal development of habits linked with mass transportation.

Communiting is a life experience, and after years in the suburbs of Paris, I have learned, often the hard way, the code of Suburbanity Rules that makes your life as a commuter more organized, more efficient. In DC, I go by them to their full extent. I do not wait for the next train in the hope that it might be less crowded (it will not be, what’you believe?). I am aware that trains stopping at the same track go in two different directions: the “every ten minutes metro” in the city center is in fact an “every twenty minutes” for the travelling suburban I am (by way of consequence, I do not eventually land in foreign territory by mistaking the blue and the yellow lines). I place myself in cars close to the exit of my destination station so that I can be the first to hit the escalators, saving me a painful waiting behind slow users, and, yes, I walk in the escalator. I have your favorite stations which positively contribute to my style of life, and avoid others (for some reason I do not like Metro center) etc. And you do no mind being kicked in the back by the door when you catch your train because the only thing that crosses your mind is your elated inner voice saying: “Yeah! Got it!”

However, the skills necessary to properly riding a metro are not as developed here than they are in Paris or Tokyo. People are relatively slow and tend to stay at a distance even in a crowded car. They do not rush to the exit, and force you to walk your way at a calmer pace.  They just do not zigzag in a hurry between other passengers (so civilized!). And they have no idea of the existence in other places of the world of “pushers” in charge of compressing a human mass into a metro car at rush hours. For better or for worse, public commuting is still an art in development in this part of the world.

 

Spring over the city

Smoky Mountains

I have been complaining privately these last days about a rainy spring in the DC area—and far beyond, since I had exactly the same weather last week when I visited North Carolina. Sometimes rain is a supplement. That was the case then. The smoky mountains in ghostly columns of fog and low clouds hanging on the roads.

As a matter of fact, very little of my whining over the weather is due to actual impediments. My daily routine is hardly affected since I live just above a metro station, safe from the interference of the sky, and the only bad part (since I lost my umbrella two weeks ago, I still wonder how, since it was bright yellow) is the 400 yards walk between the University shuttle stop and my office or the library. April had not lived up its early promises when we had a few

Washington April 2009

fine days, enough to visit the mall by a beautiful Cherry blossom weekend: the blossoming of the many Japanese trees is anational and even international April attraction in DC. Then the grey and the rain, and chilly temperatures regain our space.

Suddenly, just yesterday, the spring came for real, or rather we happened to be moving without a warming in this heavy, hot, humid weather that is spring here, but is warmer than summers in France. All of a sudden, Arlington, the concrete canyon city where I live in the suburbs of DC, turns into a Mediterranean neighborhood. It is really Mediterranean in the sense that we have a little Arab community which enjoys the new freedom offered by the sun, but it is still more metaphorically so: people colonize the plazas at the bottom of the 20 stories buildings and the sidewalks of the numerous cafés of my area. Even the many Irish pubs around my block, for the longest time secluded in the cozy warm nest of their interior, open their doors and serve beer outside. A fountain in the little court under my balcony has been started up, and the chanting of its stream is a constant background noise. It is now “my” fountain. In the evening, and rather late at night on weekends, voices from the street echo, up to my 17^th floor.

My morning gym has been enriched too with new spectacles. The sun deck where I do my stretching has taken a new air of leisure with tables and sun chairs. The view is spectacular as always: I cannot help finding it wonderful every single day. Under the bright light of the season, the Capitol and Washington monument look still more imposing. The most interesting is a peculiar happening every morning between 9 and 10. I noticed—whether it was already the case in the winter without my noticing, or because the warmer weather allows it, I do not know—a little troop of Marines (or so I guess) exercising on the deck of a little Navy facility that is around the corner. My own modest exercise is tuned to

Marines exercizing: Click to watch the video. It is embedded in a powerpoint file that you can either download or open (then view the slideshow)

the martial rhythm of the drums—as it is the case with “my” fountain, I am amazed that echoes can go so far. I pause and watch, thinking with a sting of delight that spring is the season when watching life is just what life is about.

Hence, the photos and video of this post.

 

A visit to Ball State

When my colleague Pr. Douglas N* heard I would be in the US on a Fulbright-Shuman fellowship this semester, he asked me if I would be keen on visiting his home institution in Indiana, Ball Sate University to give a lecture to his students. I was very enthusiastic at the scheme and sought support from CIES via the Occasional Lecturer Program it provides. Doug—I remember his amused surprise years ago when I first called him the French way “Doog”—is a professor of International business. He works hard with his colleagues in his department to internationalize the curriculum of his home institution. We had first met in the wake of the endeavor, years ago, when we renewed Ball State’s agreement with my own university in France. I visited Ball State, as Vice-President of my university, and in the following years, we organized workshops for Ball Sate students on their field trip to Europe in France. I should note that it happened with the complicity and genuine support of my own colleagues, such as the Dean of the faculty of sciences, a generous move in times when the academic milieu in France was not always American-friendly.

On my first visit, Ball State was twice an unknown place to me: I had never visited a public institution of higher education in the US—for some reason, I always had been associated with private universities and colleges—I did not know the Midwest. These were two good reasons for a visit. As a French academic, strongly committed to the public service of higher education, I was eager to interact with colleagues and students from a state institution. As a long time admirer and friend of the US, discovering a new area of the country was an incentive. That was, I must say, quite unusual. French academics tend to know of the US only New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. DC hardly counts as a place to go, while New Orleans benefits from some reputation because of the Cajun culture and the fact that the name of the city in French is just so beautiful: La Nouvelle Orléans. The Midwest is just terra incognita.

Since my first visit as a University Vice-President, I went back to Ball State once, this time as the Chair of the department of political science. It meant a lot to me to be able to visit as a Fulbright Fellow. I was able to do things that I had not done on my previous visits. I saw a little more of Muncie, one of these cities of contrast, where you can get the wrong impression if you do not go to the right places. I had no idea, also, that the countryside around the city could prove to be so beautiful. On a more personal note, I got to meet with Doug’s wife who graciously hosted me for a night. At the restaurant where I had the pleasure to reconnect with another colleague from Ball State and meet with another one I did not know, as well as with their wives, I was cheered with a “he’s no rookie” when I successfully survived the interminable list of options that any American restaurant offers to (or inflict on) its patrons (I indulged in one my favorites, the bbq ribs). It was an opportunity to know more about the region, the university, but also to be privy to how people viewed the current situation of the country. I naturally answered questions about France, Europe, and our academic system—currently undergoing a severe crisis.

My lecturer’s duties were no less interesting. Doug offered me to attend one of his classes, an opportunity I seized eagerly. The topic of the day was the final presentations of the students. I was greatly interested in hearing them. At my colleague’s request, I gave some insight on a couple of cases that I happened to know about. All cases presented were international business. One striking testimony to the opening business culture in the US (and to the success of the course) was how students took for granted that business was a worldwide game not solely involving American players. They were keen on grasping the difference in cultures and organization between countries, and how it sometimes poses problem when one is not careful enough to address them. In this context, having a foreign visitor at hand added value, I think. My final duty was a talk on France-USA: Global interactions from politics to Economy (the outline is now posted on my website). A few students who had visited my own university attended, and contributed to the discussion.

From my university in Versailles to Ball State, there is apparently a long stretch. It is only appearance, and a deceiving one. If there is one final thing I can say about this visit, it is that it made it clear to me (and hopefully the students) beyond any doubt.