Loca Lingo Multicultural

“Ladies and gentlemen,

“I find myself at perhaps the most famous university in the most powerful country in the world. With your permission, I will say a few words on the subject of the politics of a great power.” … (for the full speech : civilisation’s thin veneer, 1995, Vaclav Havel, Harvard University)

Writer, dissident during the soviet regime in the former Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel got elected (1993 & 1998) president of the independent Czech Republic right away after its independence.

He became Doctor Honoris Causa from Harvard University (1995).

Harvard, one of the most famous and traditional USAmerican universities (Republican vision mostly)… where official speeches make clear analogies between New-York and Rome, the US and the Roman Empire, preach about the American duty to educate the world according to its values.
Some of my friends studied there, and went through the PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) Master, and frankly speaking, even if some of them are great minds, when topics were about the US, a clear-cut rationality was no more. A US values brainwashing university ?

The speech, you should take the time to go through, is pretty much a double-edged criticism of great powers, as their responsibilities about the current globalization and localization trends. To great power, there is a great responsibility,… but a great humility as well.