East Meets West in Gettysburg

American University News


The picturesque town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, has a distinguished place in the American tradition of overcoming profound divisions. On the weekend of February 11-12, 2017, it witnessed a remarkable dialog between two distant worlds—the American and the post-Soviet. The Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College invited students from the Carmel Institute for a weekend of seminars and cultural immersion organized by Ms. Susan Eisenhower, the Institute's Chairman Emeritus. Dr. Anton Fedyashin, Director of the Carmel Institute of Russian Culture and History, and Ms. Eisenhower led the seminars. The meeting of young minds aimed at breaking through the seemingly impenetrable wall of stereotypes that has sprung up between Russia and America over the past few years.
Twelve students from Susan Eisenhower's course "Strategy & Leadership in Transformational Times (SALTT)" met ten AU students from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Azerbaijan to discuss misperceptions, conflicting interpretations of history and ways to surmount them. The topics dovetailed perfectly with the Carmel Institute's goal to overcome stereotypes through dialog and educational exchange, as its Founder and Chair of the Advisory Committee Susan Carmel Lehrman intended.
Upon arrival in Gettysburg, the AU group toured Gettysburg College on their way to a roundtable lunch with their American counterparts. After a go-around of personal introductions, a lively conversation immediately took off over food and coffee, which set the tone for the next twenty-four hours. After lunch, the students got straight down to business with a two-hour session in which they expressed their observations about their own societies first and then asked each other questions and discussed the similarities and differences in perceptions.
There were two take-aways from the first session. First, students quickly realized how different experiences formed their impressions about their own countries and their place in the world. Second, they also realized that dialog prevents those differences from becoming impassable obstacles to respect and cooperation.
Gettysburg senior and ...

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