Summer Institute at Harvard offers new politics course
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute will welcome a new teacher for its politics course. Dr. James Ivan Clem will teach a course titled "Ukrainian Politics in Transition."
Dr. Clem recently received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Russian Research Center. His doctoral dissertation was on the development of Ukrainian political parties since independence.
In his dissertation, titled "The Life of the Parties: Party Activism in Lviv and Donetske, Ukraine," Dr. Clem examined the growth of local party organizations in Lviv and Donetske and conducted a survey of party activists in those two cities. He spent 10 months in Lviv during the 1993-1994 academic year and traveled extensively throughout Ukraine, as well as Eastern Europe.
Dr. Clem, 28, was raised in Miami. His mother, Zweneslava Zapar Clem, is Ukrainian, and his grandmother, Daria Zapar Baron, lives down the street from the Ukrainian National Association resort, Soyuzivka, in Kerhonkson, N.Y. Dr. Clem's father, Ralph Scott Clem, is a professor of international relations at Florida International University in Miami and is well known for his publications on demographic problems of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine.
On his most recent trip to Ukraine, Dr. Clem, along with his grandmother and uncle, had the opportunity to go to his grandmother's village near Ternopil and meet his relatives for the first time.
Growing up in South Florida, Dr. Clem was a member of the Ukrainian Dancers of Miami for eight years. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at Miami Killian Senior High School. In 1989 he graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in political science, receiving high honors and being inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society.
Dr. Clem plans to pursue a university teaching career and to continue to study Ukrainian political issues such as party development, the growth of interest groups, public opinion and foreign policy.
"We are very pleased to have Dr. Clem on our faculty this year," said the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, Prof. George G. Grabowicz. "It is fitting to mark 25 years of the Summer Institute's work by appointing a member of the latest generation of American scholars to focus on Ukraine, its history and its culture."
Dr. Clem joins a highly qualified team at this year's summer school: Dr. Solomea Pavlychko, senior research fellow at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, will teach a course on Ukrainian literature; and Dr. Borys Gudziak, director of the Institute of Church History at the Lviv Theological Academy, will teach a course on modern Ukrainian history. Also included in the program are three Ukrainian language teachers: Halyna Hryn, Harvard University; Natalia Shostak, University of Alberta; and Taras Koznarsky, Harvard University.
For more information about the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's summer program call (617) 495-7833, or send e-mail to: [email protected].
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 17, 1996, No. 11, Vol. LXIV
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