The recent recipient of a Fulbright Scholar award, Professor of Politics James Richter will spend fall 2019 in the Czech Republic, teaching at Masaryk University in Brno, giving public talks and making inroads on a new research project on the politics of memory.

The Fulbright Scholar Program offers hundreds of teaching and research awards annually in more than 125 countries. The U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, Fulbright also sponsors the U.S. Student Program, whose awards typically are earned by some 20 �ֲ���ý seniors and young alumni each year.

A widely published scholar of Eastern European politics, including recent studies of the organization of civil society in Russia, Richter is thinking of bringing the Czech Republic (formerly one component of Czechoslovakia) to the forefront of his next big research project.

Professor of Politics James Richter in his office (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

He enjoys learning about Czech language, music, and history; he wrote his master’s thesis in part on the 1968 Prague Spring, a period of liberal reforms in communist Czechoslovakia that were later violently suppressed.

During his Fulbright-funded visit, which is part of his yearlong sabbatical, Richter will teach courses in international relations and foreign policy in an English-language program geared to study-abroad students from around Europe.

He hopes to use some of his time in the Czech Republic to start an inquiry into how historical events and memories factor into Czech public life. (In the U.S., the politics of memory have played a big role in the debate over Confederate statues and symbols.)

“It’s about how politicians and states try to construct a symbolic environment which will support their regime in some way, or support a national identity,” he says. “That often takes resources. It takes money to build a statue.”

“It will be a great chance to talk to people and see what they’re concerned about, what’s important to them, and to use that as a place to go from.”

Richter wants to look at how the politics of memory have played out in the Czech Republic and Germany, where World War II is “a huge aspect of cultural introspection” and the use of Nazi symbols is strictly limited. He’s also interested in Poland and Hungary, where public memory of World War II and the communist regime is “extremely fraught,” he says.

Teaching will be especially interesting, Richter says, because his students won’t have lived through world war and communist rule and will have a different sense of the impact of those events on their lives.

“I’ll be dealing with students who were born 10 years after the communist regime ended, so for them, the communist regime is stories their parents and their relatives tell them,” he says.

Richter says he is excited to meet his students, learn about the differences between Czech and American university education, and get a sense of direction for further research.

The Fulbright experience will be “a great chance to talk to people and see what they’re concerned about, what’s important to them, and to use that as a place to go from,” he says. “I’m going to teach, I’m going to learn the language, hopefully much better, and prepare for the next project.”

As a senior in the fall of 1984, Jeff Schneider ’85 was back at �ֲ���ý after a year in Germany. Like many study-abroad returners, he felt both transformed and a bit adrift at first. Then he met Craig Decker ’78, a first-year German instructor, who guided his re-entry, became a mentor, and inspired him toward a career in the academy.

Decker, who over the next 34 years would become a revered German professor and highly respected scholar, died on March 17 of cardiac arrest precipitated by respiratory failure. He was 61 years old.

“Craig was a highly respected scholar and renowned translator who explored the connections and intersections of German and Austrian social, literary, and cultural history,” said President Clayton Spencer in her announcement to the campus.

“As a teacher, he guided generations of �ֲ���ý students toward profound and prolonged encounters with German and Austrian literature and culture. With exceptional yet unassuming diligence, talent, and care, he helped his students explore new ways of structuring, perceiving, articulating, and being in the world.”

Craig Decker (left) with Professor of Politics James Richter during their 2006 �ֲ���ý Fall Semester Abroad Program in Vienna. “Craig really enjoyed the cross-fertilization that happened as our classes would overlap,” said Richter. (Lincoln Benedict ’09)

Schneider, who is now an associate professor of German studies at Vassar College, took three courses with Decker in his senior year. Perhaps more formative and memorable was the generous attention that Decker and his wife, Susanne Fetherolf ’77, devoted to Schneider and other German students outside of class.

“When I would come over to his place in the afternoon to discuss a paper, he and Susanne almost always invited me to stay for dinner, which meant hanging out with them pretty much until it was time for me to go home to sleep,” Schneider says. “They gave me a sense of community at �ֲ���ý after I had been abroad. As a mentor, he was instrumental in my decision to pursue graduate studies.”

Decker was a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of �ֲ���ý who earned highest honors in German for his thesis, “Die Entstehung und Überwindung des Egoismus in den Werken des Ödön von Horváth” (“The Emergence and Overcoming of Egoism in the Works of Odon von Horvath”). He received master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Irvine.

Arriving as an instructor in German at �ֲ���ý, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1986, associate professor in 1992, and full professor in 1998. He served as chair of the Department of German and Russian Studies and was a member of the interdisciplinary Program in European Studies.

In September 2015, Craig Decker speaks with then-first-year-student Sam Huebschmann ’19 during an Orientation program. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Decker taught more than 20 different courses during his �ֲ���ý career, from introductory German to senior seminars, exploring such topics as German cinema and Austrian literature; the legacy of Nazism and representations of Austrian fascism; pre-World War I Berlin and Austria; and German dramaturgy, reflecting his longstanding interest in the history and theory of the �մDZ��������ü���� (popular drama).

For Schneider, Decker’s teaching offered “a great overview of key texts and developments in German and Austrian literature, some based on his own research. Classes were always discussion-oriented, and he opened up meanings in the text that were not obvious.”

Schneider also remembers the “care and attention he gave to our papers. Though they often came back covered in red ink in his distinctive handwriting, I learned so much from the feedback on grammar and vocabulary — as well as the capacious comments on my ideas.”

A frequent leader of �ֲ���ý programs to Germany and Austria, Craig Decker meets with his students during the 2006 �ֲ���ý Fall Semester Abroad Program in Vienna. (Lincoln Benedict ’09)

Decker was a frequent leader or co-leader, with faculty from other disciplines, of �ֲ���ý Fall Semester programs to Berlin and Vienna, as well as Short Term programs to Austria. “Craig loved his FSAs,” says his longtime friend, Gerda Neu-Sokol, a retired lecturer in German at �ֲ���ý. “And he was always in touch with contemporary Austrian life and politics.”

“He really enjoyed the cross-fertilization that happened as our classes would overlap,” said Professor of Politics James Richter, who joined Decker for two �ֲ���ý programs in Vienna. He might be teaching Austrian literature of the 20th century, while my students were learning about three Hapsburg capitals.” For students, the result were invigorating intellectual and academic connections across disciplines.

As a sophomore in 2006, Lincoln Benedict ’09 joined Richter and Decker’s fall semester program in Vienna. He did extensive photography during the semester, yet finding images of Decker among his archives proved difficult. “He was a bit elusive in that way,” Benedict says, “but he certainly is one of the people who had the most profound effect on me at �ֲ���ý.”

Among the few photos, two Benedict favorites are “one of him with his coat with his back to us, and one of his eyes. I guess it’s fitting I never got a portrait of him — it wasn’t his style.”

In 2011, he reconnected with Decker in Vienna when both were there for work, Benedict as a videographer and art director for L.L.Bean, and Decker as he prepared for another fall semester program for �ֲ���ý.

“I may have seen him briefly since then,” Benedict says, “but the memory I’ll choose as my last is of strolling the streets in the late evening with him. He loved that city so much and was quite like it: quick-witted, irascible, a bit unpredictable, but with great depth and curiosity.”

Lincoln Benedict ’06 counts this photo of Decker, in a black coat, back facing the camera, from his 2006 Fall Semester Abroad Program in Vienna, as one of his favorites. “I guess it’s fitting I never got a portrait of him — it wasn’t his style.”

Decker was a renowned translator of 20th-century Austrian fiction and memoir and was, at the time of his death, translating the novel Die Hauptstadt (Capital City) by Robert Menasse, winner of the German Book Prize of 2017.

“He loved doing translations,” says Richter. “He was a very logical and orderly thinker: very meticulous and concerned about being accurate. Translation appealed to that part of him. He just loved taking German words and finding English words that worked best. Some of his authors said that his translations did a better job conveying ideas than their original text.”

When teaching �ֲ���ý students in Vienna, Decker often brought to class authors that he had worked with, recalls Richter. One was Peter Henisch, whose books A Very Little Woman and Stone’s Paranoia Decker translated.

Henisch talked to the class about another of his books, Negatives of My Father, about his father, a press photograher for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front during World War II. The discussion “brought up issues of art, photography, as well as moral and historical conundrums, and how the son dealt with all of that. It was fascinating.”

From 2008 to 2011 Decker was the editor of Modern Austrian Literature (now the Journal of Austrian Studies), the peer-reviewed journal of the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association. He was the editor, translator, or author of numerous scholarly publications. He edited the German-language drama section of The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama (Columbia University Press, 2007) as well as Austrian Identities: Twentieth-Century Short Fiction (Ariadne Press, 2004), and Balancing Acts: Textual Strategies of Peter Henisch (Ariadne Press, 2002).

At the time of his passing he was president of the Austrian Studies Association.

He frequently moderated panels at the ASA’s annual conference, including recent discussions about “Shaping and Escaping Modernity’s Networks” and “Austria from the Peripheries.”

In addition to include children Andrew and Grace Decker; two grandchildren; and their families. A family memorial will take place this summer.

James Richter, an accomplished trombonist as well as a professor of politics at �ֲ���ý, shown in his Pettengill Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Three musicians on the �ֲ���ý College faculty perform two concerts in the coming days.

Trombonist James Richter, a member of the politics faculty, performs music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Serocki, Marcello and Jacob at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Joining Richter is pianist James Parakilas, Moody Family Professor of Performing Arts at �ֲ���ý.

Pianist Chiharu Naruse, a member of �ֲ���ý’ applied music faculty, performs 24 Preludes for Piano, Op. 41, by Lera Auerbach, a celebrated pianist, poet and visual artist as well as composer, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, also in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required, available at . For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The Richter and Parakilas program comprises movements selected from these works:

•���� ��Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Concerto for Trombone;
•���� ��Kazimierz Serocki, Sonatina for Trombone and Piano;
•���� ��Benedetto Marcello, Sonata in F Major;
•���� ��Gordon Jacob, Concerto for Trombone.

Richter, who came to �ֲ���ý in 1987, researches nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, focusing on the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on feminist and environmental movements in Russia. He teaches international politics, the politics of postcommunism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in NGOs and world politics.

His publications include Khrushchev’s Double Bind (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), a study of cold war politics in the 1950s and ’60s.

Chiharu Naruse is a member of the applied music faculty.

Composed in 1999, Auerbach’s 24 Preludes extend a tradition, represented by such composers as Dmitri Shostakovich and Rodion Shchedrin, of prelude compositions predicated on Bach. Yet her miniatures, arranged according to the circle of fifths, are highly original, colorful and surprising.

A native of Japan, Naruse moved to the United States to study with �ֲ���ý artist-in-residence Frank Glazer in 2002. Naruse holds a master’s in music performance and a master’s in music instruction from the Hochschule Fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin.

She has performed in France and Japan, and in Maine has been a featured artist at the Ocean Park Music Festival and the Franco-American Heritage Center. In addition to solo recitals and orchestral appearances, Naruse performs with violinist Dean Stein.

She also teaches at the Portland Conservatory of Music, where she is the director of the professional division.

“It’s often said that democracies are measured by the participation of their citizens,” President Elaine Tuttle Hansen observed. “We are fortunate at �ֲ���ý to have student Democrats and Republicans who each year take that civic commitment to heart and work to register their fellow students.”

Hansen listed several ways �ֲ���ý is getting out the vote as we approach Election Day Nov. 2:

* As in past years, both groups set up tables on Orientation Day to register new students to vote. Since then, the effort has continued one-to-one.

* Discussions on the debates have been moderated by Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley Romano and Professor of Political Science James Richter. Richter is also moderating a series of student discussions about election issues each Wednesday, 6-7 p.m. in the Rowe Room of Commons.�� Occasional guests have included Judy Meyer, editorial page editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal.

* TV debate-watching nights are being organized around their respective big screens by the Republicans, Democrats, and those who prefer a non-partisan venue.

*A panel discussion was held on Oct. 6 to discuss the Palesky Tax Cap referendum in Maine, and what it would mean to Lewiston.�� Panelists were:�� John L. Painter, Candidate for District 74; Dale Douglas, Maine School Management Association; Nathan Harrington, �ֲ���ý ’05; Weston Bonney, Maine State School Board; Tom Hood, Longley Elementary School Principal; Robert Walker, President of Maine Education Association and chair of Maine Education Leadership Consortium.

*�� Election issues will again be the topic of a speech by Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution on “The 2004 Election: What’s at Stake?” at 7 p.m. Oct. 18 in Chase Hall Lounge.�� There will be a voter registration drive outside of Chase Lounge beginning at 6:30pm.

��

Participants are moderator James Richter, professor of political science, �ֲ���ý College; Arlene MacLeod, associate professor of political science, �ֲ���ý College; Dov Waxman, assistant professor of government, Bowdoin College; and Jon Custis, U.S. Marine Corps captain and a member of the �ֲ���ý College Class of 1991, who will participate via speaker-phone. Panel members will offer remarks and then open the discussion to the audience. Planned topics will range from the war in Iraq to religious fundamentalism to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khrushchev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay “Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity,” included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 �ֲ���ý Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The author of Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo (Columbia University Press, 1991) and several articles on women and political change,�� MacLeod teaches courses in political theory, area studies (Middle East and China) and women and politics. Her current research interests include the study of political imagination, politics and literature, and alternative ways of writing about politics, such as the personal essay and historical fiction.

Waxman teaches international relations and Middle Eastern politics. A former faculty member at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and a visiting fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel, Waxman also has worked as a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think-tank in Washington, D.C.�� He is the author of three monographs, The Crisis of Identity in Post-Kemalist Turkey: Domestic Discord and Foreign Policy (1998), The Islamic Republic of Iran: Between Revolution and Realpolitik (1998) and Immigration and Identity: A New Security Perspective in Euro-Maghreb Relations (1997), all published by the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism. Widely published in scholarly journals, Waxman is writing a book, Defending/Defining the Nation: The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity.

Custis received his �ֲ���ý degree in political science with a focus on international affairs. He joined the Marine Corps in 1992 and is a company commander of a Light Armored Reconnaissance battalion. He served in Somalia in 1994, and in Iraq and Kuwait from February through June 2004. He will return to Iraq in fall 2004.

Four members of the �ֲ���ý College faculty will lead a forum exploring the U.S. war with Iraq and relations between the two countries at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Avenue.

The event is open to the public at no charge.

The United States and Iraq: A Forum for the �ֲ���ý College Community will be hosted by Professor James Richter and assistant professors Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir and Matthew Nelson, all of the political science department, and Thomas Tracy, Phillips Professor of Religion.

Each of the four will speak briefly and then the discussion will be opened to comments and questions from the floor. Themes to be discussed include how the war on Iraq fits with “just war” theory, why intelligence failures are so common, how Iraq fits into the larger U.S. policy of preventive war and what steps lie ahead for the United States.

The forum is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty. For more information call 207-786-6195.

Panelists include Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed columnist; Seth Gitell, writer for the Boston Phoenix; activist and teacher Rosalie Tyler Paul, a board member at Peace Action Maine; and James Richter, associate professor of political science at �ֲ���ý College.

Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for the Globe since 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from its competitor the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. The Boston Phoenix dubbed his twice-weekly essays “a must-read,” and the Globe began receiving more mail about his columns than those of all its other columnists combined.��The first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award for opinion journalism, Jacoby has at different times been a political commentator for WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate; the host of Talk of New England, a weekly television program; and a frequent guest on WCVB-TV’s public affairs program, Five on Five. He practiced law briefly at the firm of Baker & Hostetler in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Boston to serve as deputy manager of Ray Shamie’s 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1985-87, he was assistant to John Silber, president of Boston University. Jacoby graduated from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School.

A political writer for the Boston Phoenix, the nationally recognized weekly alternative newspaper, Gitell addresses state, national and international issues. He also pens a twice-weekly Internet column, “The Daily Jolt,” in which he often discusses the U.S. “war on terror.” Gitell appears frequently as a political analyst on New England Cable News.��Prior to joining the Phoenix, Gitell was the Washington-based editor of The Forward, where he broke various national stories including Hilary Clinton’s hidden Jewish roots and her decision to change her prior position on Israel. He also covered the emergence of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal and The American Prospect. Author of Broken Promise: The Story of U.S. Army Special Forces and the Dega People in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1961-65 (Radix Press, 1996), Gitell received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Paul served as a board member of Peace Action Maine for 10 years, stepping down from her four-year position as board chair in 2002. A delegate at Peace Action’s national congress, she is a retired teacher who taught studio art at North Yarmouth Academy and Waynflete School.

Associate professor of political science at �ֲ���ý, Richter regularly teaches courses on international relations and the politics of post-communism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in nongovernmental organizations and world politics. His current research concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, with particular attention to the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on the feminist and environmental movements in Russia.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khruschev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay “Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity”, included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 �ֲ���ý Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Richter received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

Panelists include Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed columnist; Seth Gitell, writer for the Boston Phoenix; activist and teacher Rosalie Tyler Paul, a board member at Peace Action Maine; and James Richter, associate professor of political science at �ֲ���ý College.

Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for the Globe since 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from its competitor the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. The Boston Phoenix dubbed his twice-weekly essays “a must-read,” and the Globe began receiving more mail about his columns than those of all its other columnists combined.

The first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award for opinion journalism, Jacoby has at different times been a political commentator for WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate; the host of Talk of New England, a weekly television program; and a frequent guest on WCVB-TV’s public affairs program, Five on Five. He practiced law briefly at the firm of Baker & Hostetler in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Boston to serve as deputy manager of Ray Shamie’s 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1985-87, he was assistant to John Silber, president of Boston University. Jacoby graduated from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School.

A political writer for the Boston Phoenix, the nationally recognized weekly alternative newspaper, Gitell addresses state, national and international issues. He also pens a twice-weekly Internet column, “The Daily Jolt,” in which he often discusses the U.S. “war on terror.” Gitell appears frequently as a political analyst on New England Cable News.

Prior to joining the Phoenix, Gitell was the Washington-based editor of The Forward, where he broke various national stories including Hilary Clinton’s hidden Jewish roots and her decision to change her prior position on Israel. He also covered the emergence of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal and The American Prospect. Author of Broken Promise: The Story of U.S. Army Special Forces and the Dega People in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1961-65 (Radix Press, 1996), Gitell received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Paul served as a board member of Peace Action Maine for 10 years, stepping down from her four-year position as board chair in 2002. A delegate at Peace Action’s national congress, she is a retired teacher who taught studio art at North Yarmouth Academy and Waynflete School.

Associate professor of political science at �ֲ���ý, Richter regularly teaches courses on international relations and the politics of post-communism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in nongovernmental organizations and world politics. His current research concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, with particular attention to the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on the feminist and environmental movements in Russia.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khruschev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity, included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 �ֲ���ý Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Richter received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

The conference, sponsored by the Maine Collaborative for Education in the Arts and Humanities, begins at 9 a.m.

Muskie Archives director Christopher M. Beam, who worked on the Nixon White House Tapes for four years while on the staff of the National Archives, is the conference’s lead scholar. He will discuss the Nixon White House taping system and its role in the Watergate scandal.

Other conference faculty will be James G. Richter, associate professor of political science at �ֲ���ý, who will speak on Nixon’s foreign policy; and Gregory Gallant, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, who will discuss the former president’s domestic policy.

The conference on the Nixon presidency is the second program the Maine Collaborative has offered in partnership with the Muskie Archives. The first was “Why Vietnam? The U.S. Path Toward Intervention, 1945- 1965,” presented last spring.

In addition to classical works, the ensemble will play the “Dialogue for Two Trumpets” by the contemporary composer Eugene Bozza. The piece will feature trumpeters Josh Clark and Meredith Haviland, both �ֲ���ý students.

Also members of the quintet are student Benjamin Kloda, French horn; James Richter, associate professor of political science, trombone; and Kirk Read, assistant professor of French, tuba.