Sense in Salzburg

In the latest issue of Nation, historian Richard Hofstadter terms the College's undergraduate-sponsored Salzburg Seminar in American Studies "one of the most significant educational enterprises in the world today." He speaks of the school's eighty-five "allusive and sensitive" European students, carefully selected from some 16 nations. He boasts of the numerous top American professors who teach and have taught all subjects about the United States, and he concludes that this secluded gathering of western minds is a "triumph over a world that so often succeeds in isolating us and keeping us lonely."

Such enthusiasm is well justified. Sinc 1947, when three College men recognized the urgent need to teach intelligent Europeans about America, the unique school has grown in effectiveness as a center of American culture in the former totalitarian nation of Austria.

Salzburg Seminar has recently undergone considerable revision, and all of it will help the school to be even more effective. It now operates on a permanent year-around basis. And it now is a corporation and can receive tax-free charity money in its own right. These changes imply good management; they should lead to a healthy Salzburg and a great deal of through understanding about America among the people of Europe.