Experiment in Bologna

With proper medieval pomp and ceremony, the University of Bologna's top academicians and some important guests, e.g., U.S. Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce, Italy's Education Minister Giuseppe Ermini, gathered in the high-ceilinged Aula Magna last week to inaugurate a new addition to one of Europe's oldest universities: the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, first U.S. graduate school to be established on the Continent.* Said Ambassador Luce: "America is not here to add something to Bologna's centuries-old tradition . . . but to gain strength from it in a specialized field."

Spirit & Substance. The University of Bologna has much strength to offer, both in spirit and scholarly substance. Although its exact origins are lost in the mists of 11th century history, during the 13th century Bologna attracted as many as 10,000 students a year to study canon and civil law, rhetoric and composition. Organized into 35 separate "Nations," foreign and Italian students hired their own professors, elected their rectors and reigned supreme on all nonacademic matters. Later, branching out in the arts and sciences, Bologna over the centuries mothered some of Christendom's greatest intellectuals, e.g., Dante, Petrarch, Copernicus, built up what is probably Western Europe's finest library (500,000 volumes) of history and economics.

Although its library and its cosmopolitan tradition helped bring Bologna Europe's first U.S. graduate school, the project's prime mover has been its director, slight, affable C. (for Charles) Grove Haines, 48, onetime professor of diplomatic history at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. While serving as a temporary State Department attache in postwar Italy, Historian Haines had an idea: the young experts the U.S. and its allies need to conduct European affairs could best be trained on location. After winning over his Johns Hopkins superiors, Haines went back to Bologna with a detailed program, got Rector Felice Battaglia's offer of the use of all university facilities. U.S. donors agreed to underwrite the center's annual $200,000 cost, and Director Haines set up shop in Bologna.

Bright Young People. The center will operate on a limited scale (eleven students, three professors) until July, but Director Haines's plans call for an eventual enrollment of 50 U.S. and West European students (most of them on fellowships) and eight full-time professors, six of them European specialists. Standards will be high (passing grade: B), classes limited to ten or twelve students apiece, with heavy emphasis on original research into broad subjects, e.g., Governmental Structures for Conduct of Foreign Affairs, Administrative Law and Practice in Italy. Required for admission: a college degree, fluency in at least one European language, an outstanding academic record in the social sciences. Tuition: $800.

Unlike most graduate schools in the liberal arts, the Bologna Center is not primarily designed to turn out scholars, will grant no degrees--although credits earned there may be applied to advanced degrees from Johns Hopkins. Of four U.S. students already enrolled at the center, only blonde, 22-year-old Mary Lincoln of Paoli, Pa., a French foreign policy specialist, has any intention of becoming a teacher, and even she is seriously considering Government service. Says Director Haines: "What we are after is bright young people with promise of leadership." First students to fill the bill completely: two Austrians who are already slated for Foreign Office jobs next September.

* Another Johns Hopkins branch, with five students, was started in Rangoon, Burma, last June.

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