Interview with Ion Ratiu from the late 1980s by Vlad Georgescu of Radio Free Europe
The relationship between the two was close and highly relevant as Vlad Georgescu of Radio Free Europe who conducted the interview with Ion Ratiu, was not only the inspiration of Ion Ratiu’s decision to establish a Chair of Romanian studies in the US but also intended by Ion Ratiu to be the first holder of such a chair. However Vlad Georgescu died, suspected assassinated by the Romanian Securitate (DIE), of an induced brain tumor following his RFE revelations: see Wikipedia
Ion Ratiu Chair of Romanian Studies (IRCRS) at Georgetown University was established by Ion Ratiu in the late 1980s, as a center for research and academic excellence focusing on his native Romania in the city he saw as the capital of the free and democratic world.
The Chair’s purpose is to expand knowledge of modern Romanian history, politics, and culture, and to provide the United States’ administration with specialists and resources on Romanian history and current realities. It is the first chair of Romanian studies in the world.
The endowment of the Ion Ratiu Chair of Romanian Studies was made through a Ratiu Family Foundation Grant.
“Ion Raţiu” Visiting Professors:
The Ratiu Foundation is pleased to report the Dr. Diana Dumitru has begun a three-year contract at Georgetown University as the Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies. She will develop courses in Eastern European studies with a substantial Romanian component that will treat the period from World War II through the post-communist present. During the 2021-22 academic year, Dr. Diana Dumitru was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. For two decades she has taught modern Romanian and East European history at the Ion Creangă State University in Chişinău, where she is currently Associate Professor. Among the courses she has taught are “Comparative Politics of East European Countries,” “Contemporary Eastern Europe,” “Modern Totalitarian Regimes,” and “Nations, Nationalism, and Ethno-Political Conflicts.” In 2019, Dumitru received the Honor Medal, the highest award at Ion Creangă State University for teaching excellence. Dr. Diana Dumitru is the author of two books and approximately 40 articles and book chapters in English and Romanian, many in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Her first book, in Romanian, was Marea Britanie şi Unirea Principatelor Romane (1856-1859) [Great Britain and the Union of Romanian Principalities] (2010). Her second book, The State, Anti-Semitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Soviet-Romanian Borderlands was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016 and was a Finalist in the 2017 Yad Vashem International Book Prize. It was translated into Romanian as Vecini in vremuri de restriște. Stat, antisemitism și Holocaust in Basarabia și Transnistria (Iași: Polirom, 2019). She is currently finishing a third book co-authored with Chad Bryant and Kateřina Čapkova, The Trial that Shook the World: The Slanský Trial and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Stalinism, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Dr. Diana Dumitru has held many prestigious visiting and research positions around the world, as Black Sea Link Research Fellow, New Europe College, Bucharest in 2011-2012; as Gerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto in 2016; Research Fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena, 2017-2018; and as Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence in 2021.
Dennis Deletant was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. He was formerly Professor of Romanian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London, where he taught between 1969 and 2011, and held the same position at the University of Amsterdam (on secondment from UCL) between 2003 and 2010.
He is the author of several monographs and volumes of studies on the recent history of Romania, among them “Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89” (London; New York, 1996), “Romania under Communist Rule” (Bucharest, 1998), “Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965” (London; New York, 1999) and “Ion Antonescu. Hitler’s Forgotten Ally” (London; New York, 2006).
Visit his Georgetown University page.
Charles King was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University and is currently Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University. He lectures widely on international affairs, social violence, and ethnic politics, and has worked with major broadcast media such as CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, the History Channel, and MTV. He previously served as chairman of the faculty of Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
He is the author of five books, including “Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams” (New Zork, 2011), “The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus” (New York, 2008), and “The Black Sea: A History” (New York, 2004), “The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture” (New York, 2000), and his work has been translated into more than ten languages. King’s articles and commentary have appeared in magazines and newspapers such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Times Literary Supplement, as well as in leading academic journals.
Visit his Georgetown University page.
Gail Kligman was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University and is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously a Professor of Anthropology with the University of Chicago and the University of Texas, Austin, her academic interests are political sociology, cultural anthropology and ethnology especially connected to Central and Eastern Europe. In the 1970s and 1980s she made numerous field and research studies in Romania and Maramureş in particular.
Gail Kligman is member of the editorial board of several prestigious magazines: Slavic Review, East European Politics and Societies, Theory and Society, Sfera Politicii; she led numerous research projects at the Wilson Center, the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and Collegium Budapest; and organized numerous conferences and colloquies. She is the author of numerous books, studies and articles, among them: “Calus: Symbolic transformation in Romanian ritual” (1981), “The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania” (1988), “The politics of gender after socialism” (2000), and “Reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism” (2000).