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Anouar Majid, Ph.D., É«ÏãÊÓƵ vice president for global affairs and director of the Center for Global Humanities, was invited to attend a reception at the Congressional Atrium in Washington DC for the presentation of that is intended to advance a dialogue on the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the future of our nation.

The event featured the co-chairs of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, and John W. Rowe, retired chairman and chief executive officer, Exelon Corporation.

Joining them on stage were Karl W. Eikenberry, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and retired U.S. Army lieutenant general; Pauline Yu, president of the American Council of Learned Societies; and the actor John Lithgow.

Majid notes that "Eikenberry was most powerful in his talk about the need to know cultures, while the actor John Lithgow gave us a plausible dystopian scenario in which all memory of the past is erased."

Among other speakers were Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee; Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia; and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

In a column on his blog Tingitana, Majid comments: "I walked away convinced that we, at the University of New England, have done the right thing. Our Center for Global Humanities is, in many ways, the kind of project that the Commission is calling for. We still, however, need to do more."  .