Call for nominations: UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize

UNESCO is inviting nominations for the fourth award of the UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize. This invitation is extended to all Member States, in consultation with their National Commissions, as well as to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) maintaining official relations with UNESCO and whose work is in the field of preservation and conservation of documentary heritage.

Click here to go to the website with full information!

The Economist on January 13 published an appreciation of Gene Smith who died in December, 2010. Tibetan monasteries had collected manuscripts over some 1500 years, until the Chinese occupation of Tibet when monasteries "were ransacked and destroyed. Not only books were burned, but also the carved wooden blocks from which they were printed. Fleeing Tibetans tried to save the texts" as they sought asylum in other countries, but many were lost; the rest were disbursed widely in the places of sanctuary.

Over five decades, Mr Smith made it his business to put Tibetan literature back together. He did it more or less single-handedly, fired by his love of the language and the culture and aided by a brain that rapidly became an encyclopedia of lineages, sutras, lives of lamas, and the history and ownership of every book he came across......

Armed only with fistfuls of rupees and with letters of introduction from his Tibetan teacher, Deshung Rinpoche, to various lamas, he trawled through Indian libraries and then travelled into the hills. There, though still fearful of exposing their treasures, exiled Tibetan monks showed him the texts they had; and, with the money he gave them, printed more. In the end the PL480 programme saved 8,000 books, each of which was printed in 20 or so copies for American centres of research.....

In 1999 Mr Smith set up the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Centre, first in Boston and then in New York, and set about putting his 12,000-volume collection, the largest anywhere, online. By his death he and his team had scanned 7m pages of text and had made CDs of files, such as the 110-volume kangyur, or teachings of the Buddha, which were too huge to download. As for the books themselves, he left them to a university in China: the place where, despite everything, he felt Tibetan Buddhism would eventually flourish again.

Perhaps Mr. Smith merits a posthumous award of the Jikji Memory of the World Prize.

UNESCO pays tribute after death of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss

The world has lost one of its greatest thinkers with the death of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said today, as he paid tribute to the renowned anthropologist.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss was “one of the giants of the 20th century,” said Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General, in a statement issued from the agency’s headquarters in Paris following the announcement of the Frenchman’s death at the age of 100.

Read more....

We Mourn the Passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy

We join millions of people around the world in mourning the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy. While Senator Kennedy is being remembered for his many achievements on behalf of the poor, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised in the United States, he is also being recalled as a longtime champion and leader in advocating for the poor and for those without a voice in other countries. Senator Kennedy led the effort to secure for refugees and immigrants the right to a life with dignity while also fighting for greater resources for those around the world who suffer in poverty and with sickness. He was a strong supporter of the United Nations and its mission. And while Senator Kennedy was beloved in this country, he will also be sorely missed by people far outside our borders, especially those who will no longer have his voice to rely on for their behalf.

Obituary: William Lowenthal

William Lowenthal, 87, a Foreign Service officer died May 6 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He had cancer. Dr. Lowenthal retired in 1981 as economic development officer for the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris. Bill Lowenthal was a good friend and colleague to Americans for UNESCO.

Read his obituary in The Washington Post.

James G. McCargar

James McCargar accepting the
Col. Michael Kovats Medal of Freedom
from the American Hungarian Federation

We regret to inform you of the death of James G. McCargar, a long time member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO. Mr. McCargar died on the afternoon of May 30, 2007.

A graduate of Stanford University, James McCargar, briefly a reporter on the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, was commissioned a Foreign Service Officer in 1942. He was Vice Consul at Vladivostok 1942-43, and Secretary of Embassy, Moscow, 1943. Assigned to the Dominican Republic in 1943, he was commissioned in the Naval Reserve in 1944, and served as Foreign Liaison Officer with the Soviet Navy and Merchant Marine at Akutan and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Appointed Secretary of Legation, Budapest, in 1946, he was Chief of the Political Section and, under State Department authorization and orders, established an escape network in then-Russian-occupied territory which saved more than sixty democratic Hungarian and Romanian political leaders and pro-Western figures and their families in danger of arrest, deportation and/or death.

At Genoa during the Italian elections of 1948, McCargar was then detailed to the Office of Policy Coordination, in the CIA, where he served until 1950 as Chief, Division of Southeastern European Affairs. He served at the Paris Embassy as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Allied Coordinating Committee, 1950-53. In 1955 he joined the Free Europe Committee in New York, as liaison with the United Nations and the Assembly of Captive European Nations. European Director at Paris of political, social and cultural programs for the Committee, 1956-58, he continued at Paris as a Consultant to the President of the Committee until 1960. That year he was co-founder and Secretary, Americans Abroad for Kennedy.

As Special Assistant to the Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1978-1982, McCargar was the Coordinator, Executive Branch, on cultural policy for the U. S. National Commission on UNESCO. He attended two UNESCO General Conferences as an expert, and in 1982 was a member of the U. S. Delegation to the Second UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policy. At the invitation of the Norwegian National Commission for UNESCO, he was the U. S. Observer at the 1991 UNESCO European Regional Conference on Cultural Development at Oslo. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Americans for the Universality of UNESCO from 1985, and continues as a member of the Board of Americans for UNESCO.

From 1940 to the present McCargar published articles, fiction, and book reviews under his own name and as "Christopher Felix" in a dozen publications, and from 1960 on authored or co-authored four books. He was also ghostwriter for Men of Responsibility, the 1965 memoirs of Dirk U. Stikker, former Foreign Minister of The Netherlands, and Secretary-General of NATO.

Read this long letter by James McCargar published in Commentary magazine refuting an article on the U.S. departure from UNESCO.

In memorium

Thursa Bakey Sanders, 90, who was once personal secretary to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish, died April 11 at her home in McLean. She had Alzheimer's disease. In 1945, while working closely with MacLeish (who was then assistant secretary of state for cultural and public affairs) and Adlai Stevenson (then a special assistant to the secretary of state), Mrs. Sanders assisted in the creation of the United Nations charter in San Francisco and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in London.

Bob Maybury's tribute to Al Baez

Albert V. Baez, Ph.D.

Robert Maybury has written a moving tribute to his friend and mentor, Albert V Baez, who died last week.

Read also the memorial posted on this blog yesterday.

Albert V. Baez -- In Memoriam

Albert V. Baez, the first director of science education at UNESCO, died last Tuesday, of what his family described as "natural causes," in San Mateo County, California. He was 94.

Dr. Baez was the director of the science education program of UNESCO from 1961-67. During that period he organized and led a program to improve science education in secondary schools worldwide. The program included projects to improve physics education in Latin America, chemistry education in Asia, biology education in Africa, and mathematics education in the Arab states. The trail breaking program introduced simple, inexpensive kits to allow science experiments in secondary schools, produced films, and utilized programmed education techniques (which were very innovative at the time) for the teachers of science. The work depended significantly on Dr. Baez' earlier participation in the Physics Science Studies Committee which helped to improve physics education in U.S. secondary schools.

Previously, in 1951, he had served UNESCO in Baghdad, where he taught at Baghdad University. In the 1980s, he served as chairman of the Commission on Education for the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Dr. Baez was a distinguished physicist, known professionally as the co-inventor (in 1948) of the X-ray reflection microscope. He served on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley and other universities. As a physics professor and a pacifist, he refused to use his considerable expertise to advance the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.

In retirement, he served as president of Vivamos Mejor (Let Us Live Better), an organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life through science-based education and community development projects in Latin America. He was active in the work of Bread and Roses, an organization founded by his daughter Mimi Farina to bring free live music to people confined in institutions - jails, hospitals, juvenile facilities and rest homes. He endowed the Hispanic Engineer Albert Baez Award, which is given for Outstanding Technical Contribution to Humanity.

In 1956 (with W.C. Nixon) he published Lectures on the X-ray Microscope, and in 1967 he wrote The New College Physics: A Spiral Approach. He co-authored The Environment and Science and Technology Education, published in 1987, and with his daughter, Joan Baez, the memoir A Year in Baghdad in 1988.

To those in the international community interested in science education, he is known as a founding father of the discipline. To the general public he is perhaps better known as the father who introduced his daughters, Joan Baez and Mimi Farina to music, to the love of peace, and to social responsibility.

Dr. Baez was born on November 15, 1912, in Puebla, Mexico, and came to the United States with his family at two years of age. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Drew University, a master's degree in physics from Syracuse University, a master's degree in mathematics and a doctorate in physics from Stanford University.

Dr. Baez is survived by his wife Joan Bridge Baez of Woodside, Calif.; and daughters Joan Baez and Pauline Bryan of Carmel Valley, Calif.

A Quaker memorial celebration was planned for May.

Read Dr. Baez' obituaries in:

• The San Francisco Chronicle
• The Los Angeles Times