Dean Steinberg, Jim, thank you for the honor of joining the SAIS community to help inaugurate this truly magnificent new home. Jim has contributed so much over his remarkable career, but his most lasting contribution is the generation of thinkers, the generation of doers that he’s educated, that he’s mentored, that he’s inspired. Including me.
Dr. Brzezinski also believed that one of his most enduring contributions to international affairs was shaping America’s rising scholars and practitioners – including President Carter, who described himself as “an eager student” of and Ian, Mark, Mika – all of whom have strived to bring us closer to what Zbig called the pragmatic fusion of American power with American principle. So eighty years ago, when Paul Nitze came together with then-Congressman Chris Herter to create this institution, they set about finding a place to house it.
They settled on a decaying mansion on Florida Avenue – (laughter) – that had once been home to a girls’ school. An old basketball court served as SAIS’s first library. As Jim mentioned, I had the experience of working in the original housing for SAIS – also the profound, distinct honor of temporarily occupying the office that Paul Nitze once inhabited.
Source: STATE.GOV
