An American – university – in Kosovo

Chris Hall is president of a three-year-old college that hopes to instill values of free exchange and civil society.

By Robert Marquand

Pristina, Kosovo - A few years ago, Chris Hall was a state senator from midcoast Maine. He had quit a job as a steel and mining executive, deciding "never again" to do the weekly commute from Portland to New York. But a defeat in 2004 opened the door for Mr. Hall to become the first president of one of the more unusual colleges in Europe: the American University in Kosovo.
After decades of repression and war, Kosovo's schools were in tatters. A privileged few studied abroad. But AUK, formed three years ago with funds from the Albanian diaspora and the only multiethnic private college here, aspires to help the somewhat battered new state build its next generation of leaders. It's a mission the Oxford-educated Hall deeply believes in.
Kosovo's declaration of independence on Feb. 17 may have brought angry protests from Serbs 30 miles away on the Ibar River, but Hall has a college to run. He sits in on statistics classes, juggles scholarships and budgets, coordinates with Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, which grants AUK degrees, and hires Fulbright scholars.
He's added a public policy program to what is now a business degree and helped create one of the freest weekly political forums in Pristina, albeit one in English. He wants the small school to breathe the values of civil society and intelligent democratic sentiments.
Just last week, Hall was in Chicago signing a partnership with the Illinois Institute of Technology for an AUK master's in law, which will be the only such degree offered in Kosovo.
Most important, Hall and many students say, AUK offers Kosovar youths a school where they encounter Western-style debates, interaction, and educational standards.
Student Tefta Kelmendi first considered going abroad for college, since there were "many other possibilities offered to Kosovar students for study abroad and scholarships," she says. But AUK allowed her to "be part of all these significant changes that are taking place" in Kosovo, so she stayed.
The college opened in 2003 in a crowded house with few facilities. But two years ago, AUK moved to a small complex in a hilly suburb, with lecture halls, information-technology facilities, and a cafeteria-cum-student hangout. Some 34 professors – from the Balkans as well asthe US – staff the school. Enrollment is 450, but Hall and company plan for 600. Last year, the school celebrated its first graduating class, of 57.
Of those, more than 40 now work in Kosovo, a point of pride for Hall and the AUK board, whose members include prominent American Albanians like businessman Richard Lukaj and Ron Cami, a partner of the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Students come mostly from the Albanian diaspora in 11 other countries, including Syria, Nigeria, and Algeria. Four Serbian students attend – and have not left despite Kosovo's declaration of independence.
AUK is "a success story in a part of the world with few success stories at this point," says Louis Sell, a former US diplomat and an AUK board member who helped bring Hall to the school. Mr. Sell feels that after Kosovo's declaration of independence, a school of public service at AUK will make a contribution. The school is seeking $3 million in scholarships as part of a larger Kosovo package now before Congress. Kosovo "is a part of Europe and overwhelmingly pro-American. The US has been quite cautious in the money it gives. But we hope that is changing," Sell adds.


After Hall lost his senate seat in 2004, he ran into Sell, who lives nearby. Sell knew that Hall, a Briton turned naturalized American, had a longstanding interest in the Balkans. Hall was in one of the first tour groups to enter Albania in 1990 after it had been closed for decades. Sell, with other US diplomats, had worked with the Fund for the Reconstruction of Kosovo, made up of Albanians, to establish a nonprofit college in Pristina with $4 million left over from the monies collected from the diaspora.
Hall, who was going to be in Belgrade, agreed to pop down to Pristina. While the college was "this overstuffed house on a hill," as Hall recalls, he was "deeply impressed" with students. "They don't have the worldliness you find in so many American kids of this generation," he says.
Before 1999, Kosovar students lived in a virtual police state under the Serbs. After NATO intervention, they were going to schools that "suffered every conceivable form of setback. But Hall found "a degree of idealism and passion for learning that I had not expected.... [We] don't have the drugs and crime you would expect, either."
Hall taught public policy courses for two years, then agreed to be president in the summer of 2007. That meant living away from his wife, Jackie Wardell, who heads a staff of 80 at a community bank on the Maine coast that does a small business lending to women and minorities.
"We thought about it long and hard. It took a lot of searching," Hall says, adding that his administration's motto in working out knots and kinks in a highly sensitive locale is "to be diplomats – friends with everybody and allies of nobody."
"Kosovo has a population of incredible talent and energy; I wouldn't be here if I weren't optimistic," he says. Some of his biggest battles in what he calls "management by walking around" is raising faculty expectations of students: "I don't want to hear that we have to go easy because these are poor Kosovars. They have the talent to be every bit as good as RIT students."
Robert McCloud, an IT professor here on a Fulbright from Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, describes Kosovo youths as a bright and innovative generation who haven't been exposed to enough differing ways of thinking. But being isolated, he says, "They are much too self-taught." he says. In his graphics classes he tries to get them to expand into different types of software. "Everything is done in Photoshop. They buy the software for $1.50. So finally I tell them, don't show me any more Photoshop!"
For Hall, AUK's success is measured by the help it offers the new state. With a pedigree name (American University) and English fluency requirement, in gritty Pristina the school has a reputation as elite. Only about 20 percent of students are on scholarship, and the tuition is $4,000 a year, hefty by Kosovo standards. Still, an AUK degree is not "a passport out of town," Hall says.
Hall, who deeply loves Maine and its people, says he is giving AUK "three years, about right for this kind of commitment."

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

Chicago-Kent College of Law and American University in Kosovo (AUK) have signed an agreement to establish a special graduate law study program. The agreement was initialed March 6 by Chicago-Kent dean Harold J. Krent and Ambassador William G. Walker, chair of the AUK board of trustees.

Chicago-Kent College of LawUnder the terms of the agreement, Chicago-Kent faculty will go to Kosovo to teach a graduate-level program designed to give AUK students an introduction to the American and international commercial legal systems, and to enable them to earn a master of laws (LL.M.) degree from Chicago-Kent in two semesters.

The students will complete their first semester at American University in Kosovo in Prishtina, where they will take a number of courses, including Introduction to the American Legal System, Overview of Intellectual Property Law, International Business Transactions, and International Capital Markets. Each course will be offered over a two-week period with three hours of intensive study per day. Upon completion of the course work, AUK students will have earned 10 credits toward the 24 needed to earn the LL.M degree from Chicago-Kent. The students will spend their second semester in the United States at Chicago-Kent.

Administrators from Chicago-Kent and AUK see the program as a way of helping Kosovo develop a corps of young lawyers with exposure to American and other international legal regimes that will, in turn, support and strengthen the country’s commitment to the rule of law.

The program is an outgrowth of an option paper written for AUK administrators three years ago by Chicago-Kent professor and former dean Henry H. Perritt, Jr. In it, he argued that the university was well suited to meet a serious gap in professional education for lawyers in Kosovo. After a series of focus groups of prospective students and consultation with senior political leaders, program concepts were refined.

“The partnership between Chicago-Kent and American University in Kosovo can empower the best young people to overcome the culture of the past and enable Kosovo to become a model of the rule of law,” said Professor Perritt, who will oversee the new program.

“Kosovo’s success as an independent state depends on the quality of its legal system. The country has many young professionals deeply committed to a rule of law. Unfortunately, too many judges are indifferent to results, ignorant about the law, and corrupt. Too many older lawyers perpetuate the perception of corruption and lack the skills to advance legal arguments on behalf of their clients based on careful analysis of the law,” said Professor Perritt.

Professor Perritt has been extensively involved in Kosovo for more than a decade. In 1998, he established “Operation Kosovo,” a multidisciplinary program that began using Internet and database technology to assist Kosovo refugees and help provide technical legal assistance to help leaders construct a rule of law and create an effective set of legal institutions. Professor Perritt is the author of two forthcoming books about Kosovo’s struggle for independence.

Chicago-Kent College of Law

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!