The United Nations flag will fly high over the academic quad next Wednesday, when Alvaro de Soto, under secretary general of the UN, speaks at Tufts as part of UN Day festivities.
The ceremony, a historic "first" at Tufts, will be open to the general public and serve as the Boston area's first UN Day event.
"The UN Association of Greater Boston is grateful to the Tufts community for being the place where UN Day is beginning, in the greater Boston area," said Fletcher Professor Alan Henrikson, a former president of the UN Association of Greater Boston. "We are 'The Hill of the City.'"
De Soto, a senior UN official and international diplomat who has worked closely with three successive secretary generals, will be the main speaker at the event.
"Mr. de Soto, in many respects, embodies some of the goals and values of the UN," said Professor Ian Johnstone, an international lawyer who served as an assistant to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. De Soto, Johnstone said, represents what the UN stands for. "He is best known as a mediator and a peace maker, which is a role which the UN can justifiably take pride in."
President Lawremce Bacow will speak at the flag-raising, along with Henrikson and Johnstone, who have worked with the UN and will introduce de Soto.
Henrikson, the director of the Fletcher Roundtable on a New World Order, came up with the idea of bringing the UN to campus to serve as an example to other colleges. "What we are doing at Tufts can be exemplary, inspiring other colleges and universities, in the US and around the world, to do the same," he said. "That is our ambition."
Fletcher students, staff, and faculty, the undergraduate international relations program, and the President's Office are organizing the event. Members of an ad hoc committee that organized the event say they hope to attract alumni, culture groups, and Boston-area newspapers.
Sharifa Pastori, a Fletcher student and member of this committee, related the celebration to current events related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "We want to stress the UN's role and the good that is does and the relevance it has today," she said. "It is the main world body that can fight world terrorism on a global level."
Because of President George W. Bush's war against terrorism, the UN will likely have a greater voice throughout the world, Johnstone said. "The timing for this is especially good given the events of Sept. 11 and the role the UN has been playing and is likely to play in the future in regard to these incidents," he said. "The expectations on the UN are as high as they have ever been."
Last week, the UN and Annan, who spoke at Fletcher's commencement ceremony in May, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Since Annan was recently re-elected for another five-year term, Johnstone said the prize was "a vote of confidence from the Nobel Committee and the international community of what Annan and the UN can do in the next five years and beyond."
"It is fitting that Tufts, a truly international school, should be recognizing the UN in that way," Johnstone said of next week's event.
This is the UN's official "Year of the Dialogue Among Civilizations."
"Our University's community is a kind of microcosm of that," Henrikson said. "The conversations we're having on campus need to be, and in some extent are, repeated worldwide."
