International Seminar

"The International Seminar seeks not necessarily agreement on international issues, but rather discussion and broadening through intellectual interchange in the humanities, the social sciences, and economics."

Such was Director Henry A. Kissinger's description of the eight-year-old summer seminar, as 45 delegates from throughout the world rounded out their third week of conferences, guided tours, and public addresses.

"This is not an exercise in international goodwill," stated Kissinger. "Delegates are instructed to pull no punches." Representatives from sensitive trouble-spots all over the globe--authors, journalists, teachers, economists, and government officials--from Poland and Yugoslavia to Egypt and Iraq, trade facts and opinions with comparative freedom and considerable candor.

Dusan Simic, a staff writer for Borba, Yugoslavia's largest daily newspaper, was not "surprised when I got to America. We get almost all American films. The few we don't get," he added, "such as From Here to Eternity, are withheld by your country."

Can Yugoslav journalists write what they wish? Simic stated that Borba, formerly a Party organ, presently enjoys a less formal relationship with the Party. Only major editorials must seek Party review.

Mrs. Anna Piper, an English authoress from Lower Mall, London, described her novels as "light, middle-class, and sexy." "I'm almost the least 'academic person' in the crowd," she said. Her novels include Early to Bed, Green for Love, and The Hot Year. Mrs. Piper finishes a book a year and has a seventh on the way.

"Americans," she finds, after a sight-seeing tour to Colorado, "are too self-conscious about getting along." Whereas Britishers greet each other under the assumption that all's wrong with the world, Americans, she stated, "make a hollow attempt at cheerfulness." "Conversations start on such a happy note that they can only go down-hill."

Mrs. Piper's collection of jazz and rock 'n' roll records rivals her classical music stock. American culture hits Britain "head-on," she said, "with no softening language barrier." She finds that American plays and motion pictures are more frank and to the point than their British counterparts.

Another writer, in the humanities session with Mrs. Piper, is Martin Walser, German short-story author and novelist. German and American intellectuals are in the same boat, stated Walser, because they are not directly in the employ of their governments and stand apart from their people. "While the intellectual cannot agree with what goes on around him, it's not his business to be angry or propose ready remedies." An intellectual, Walser stated, "should be a diagnostician, not a surgeon."

"What's wrong with American films and TV," he adds, "is that sponsors pander to the public's demand for a moral." Americans "get off easy" by identifying with virtuous characters.