 On December 3, 2004, LASPAU celebrated its 40th anniversary with a gala reception and dinner following the annual meeting of LASPAU’s Board of Trustees. The two events were co-hosted by LASPAU and the Comisión México–Estados Unidos para el Intercambio Educativo y Cultural (COMEXUS), which held its 29th Board of Trustees meeting earlier in the day. The evening’s events also honored Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2004.
The reception—held at the Mesoamerican Exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology—was attended by COMEXUS Board members and staff, DRCLAS Board members and faculty, LASPAU Board members and current and former staff, dignitaries from the U.S. Department of State, Boston-area international education professionals, and Boston-area Fulbright Program grantees. The evening’s speakers included Jefferson Brown, minister counselor for press and cultural affairs, U.S. Embassy, Mexico; John H. Coatsworth, director, DRCLAS; Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State; William L. Fash, Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, and LASPAU board member; Muni Figueres, chair, LASPAU Board of Trustees; Andrés Ordoñez, general director of cultural affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Mexico, and COMEXUS Board member; and Ned Strong, executive director, LASPAU.
Following the reception, COMEXUS representatives and Board members, LASPAU Trustees and senior staff, and other guests attended a dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club. Guest speaker Joseph Duffey, senior vice president of Laureate Education, Inc. (formerly director of the United States Information Agency, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and president of American University and the University of Massachusetts), discussed his views on the future of higher education in the Americas.
|
