Romanian Ambassador visits Stanford
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The honorable Adrian Vierita, Romanian Ambassador to the US, visited the Stanford campus on November 14, 2008 on a CREEES-sponsored visit that included a tour of the Hoover Institution Archives, a meeting with the CREEES MA students, a public lunch seminar in the Freeman Spogli Institute, and a meeting with the Stanford Romanian Student Association.
Ambassador Verieta, accompanied by his wife Codrina and Dana Beldiman, Honorary Consul General of Romania in San Francisco, was greeted by Laura Cosovanu, acting manager of the Human Rights Project at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Suzan Negip-Schatt, Romanian Lecture in Romanian, Special Languages Program, and Rob Wessling, Associate Director of CREEES. Brad Bauer, Associate Archivist for Collection Development and Curator, Western European Collections of the Hoover Institution, conducted a tour of select Romanian documents included in the Hoover archival collections.
After the Ambassador returned to Encina Hall from Hoover Tower, CREEES Academic Coordinator Jack Kollmann introduced him to the CREEES MA students. Ambassador Vierita shared his personal experiences of making a career in the Romanian foreign service and his thoughts on the future of US-Romanian relations.
At noon, the Ambassador addressed a standing-room only crowd in the Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room of Encina Hall. CREEES director John Dunlop introduced the Ambassador who delivered the talk "Security and Energy in the Black Sea Region - a Romanian Perspective.” (An audio transcript of this talk is available online at fce.stanford.edu). A lively and spontaneous question-and-answer session followed the Ambassador’s delivery of his prepared remarks.
The seminar was co-sponsored by the Forum of Contemporary Europe (Freeman Spogli Institute).
The Ambassador also met with about a dozen students in the Stanford Romanian Student Association (RSA). Cezar Petriuc, RSA President and student in the Graduate School of Business, facilitated the frank and informal dialogue between the students and the Ambassador.
Ambassador Vereita answered many practical questions about visas and administration issues regarding the Romanian consulate in Los Angeles. By far the most popular subject of discussion proved to be the fact that diplomas earned at American universities (Stanford included) are not yet recognized by the Romanian state bureaucracy, preventing students who study in the United States from working in the state sector upon their return to Romania.
An audio transcript of the Ambassador Verieta’s talk is available online at fce.stanford.edu.