The Chair of Modern Greek Language and Culture «Miltiadis Marinakis» was founed at Ohio State University

The dissemination of the modern Greek culture and the opperation of Modern Greek Language teaching Chairs in the US universities, has always been supported by large donors.

In the past they were an academic direction of prestige and often gathered the spotlight of political and academic circles.

Nowadays, however, the departments of Modern Greek

Studies around the world are declining (as are other directions of Humanities Studies).

Less than 200 corresponding programs operate today in universities and institutes abroad, with a total of 9 branded Chairs of Modern Greek Studies in the USA.

The irony is that the onset of the 4th Industrial Revolution, the automation and the impending loss of hundreds of jobs have restored the need for studies that cultivate empathy, critical thinking, the study of exactly those features that synthesize the human «soul».

That is what ultimately separates us from robotic systems. And what also constituted the «quintessence» of the studies of modern Greek culture and literature of our country.

Today there are well-known Chairs in 9 US universities, with the oldest of them being that of George Seferis, operating at Harvard.

Also famous are the Chair of Constantine Cavafy at the University of Michigan, and Nikos Kazantzakis in San Francisco.

The «Miltiadis Marinakis» Chair

But at a time of a financially «distressing» situation for the top institutions around the world, with their administrations «closing» and cutting programs that are not on the lists of the most popular professions, the news can still be good.

In Columbus, Ohio, the professors of Modern Greek Studies and all those who strive for the dissemination and teaching of the Greek culture around the world in recent days, had every reason to celebrate, despite the intensity, agony and pressure created by the pandemic of the new coronavirus in a global level.

The Chair of Greek Studies at Ohio State University will be named in honor of Miltiadis Marinakis

This is because in a time of crisis for the Departments of Greek Studies abroad, rescuing the Greek language has become a top priority for a group of $ 1 million donors to The Ohio State University, to ensure the permanent operation of its Department of Modern Greek Studies.

The donor with the largest financial contribution to the impressive mobilization of the Greek Diaspora in the region and the huge fundraising that was organized was Mr. Evangelos Marinakis.

The efforts of the local community and the support of the Greek Olympic Society were particularly important.

The large financial amount was raised and was followed by its academically impressive result: the rescue of the Department of Modern Greek Studies of the Foundation, but also the support of world-renowned scholars of our mother tongue, many of whom have unique specializations in the world.

The Chair of Greek Studies at the Foundation will be named in honor of the father of the Greek shipowner and businessman, Miltiadis Marinakis.

Thus, at the beginning of June, the Board of Directors of the University of Ohio officially announced the establishment of the Chair of Modern Greek Language and Culture «Miltiadis Marinakis» after the completion of all formal procedures before its operation.

At Ohio State University (OSU), which has been operating continuously since 1870, a «lighthouse» of the Greek culture will «illuminate» for centuries. The contribution of maintaining the Chair of Greek Studies at OSU is colossal in Greek Letters.

The eponymous Chairs of Greek Studies

In the United States, with the exception of the Ohio Chair which will continue to operate under the auspices of Mr. Marinakis, the Chair of Modern Greek Studies has survived over the years mainly with the help of large donors, although some of them, as in the case of Harvard and the George Seferis Chair, are now funded by the Foundation. Specifically, the Chairs that operate are the following:

– Seferis Chair, Harvard University USA

The teaching of Modern Greek Language and Literature at Harvard begins in 1828, when the military and later 19th century scholar Alexandros Negris, a veteran of 1821, becomes their first professor at the Institute, for those interested in studying them parallely with their study-program. He also published the Grammar of Modern Greek at that time.

His successor, Sophocles Apostolidis, assists in the formation of the entire teaching program of the Modern Greek Language at the Foundation.

With the help and support of the ardent philhellene and head of the Cornelius Felton curriculum at the time, the Chair was established and for the next four decades his hard work won the appreciation of his colleagues and «put» the Modern Greek Language in the world «map» of languages.

The Chair was named in 1977 after the Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet George Seferis and became the first Chair in an american university dedicated exclusively to Modern Greek Studies, with the first «holder» being the author George P. Savvidis.

For the last twenty years, the Chair is owned by the professor of Modern Greek Studies and Comparative Literature Panagiotis Roilos.

– Cavafy’s Chair (C.P. Cavafy), University of Michigan, USA

In the Foundation’s Department of Classical Studies and Comparative Literature, its Chair of Modern Greek Studies relied on a donation from Greeks of the US Diaspora (Foundation for Modern Greek Studies), who in 1999 secured a $ 750,000 grant.

With this money, the operation of the Chair was saved, and was about to have a permanent professor for the operation and teaching of its programs.

– Center of Greek Studies (Nikos Kazantzakis), San Francisco State University, USA

The Chair was founded in 1981 by Thanassis Maskaleris, poet, translator and professor of Modern Greek at San Francisco State University.

He himself raised the money and founded it in the name of the great Greek writer. The Chair still operates today, without, however, a permanent professor holding its function and management.

In the United States the Kimon Doukas Chair of Modern Greek Studies in Columbia, and the Chair at the  University of St. Louis in Missouri, still opperate from a donation by the Caracas Foundation, at the Stony Brook University in the area, and the University of San Diego in Callao, UC. and the donations by private donors of the Greek community in the area and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Credits to the  author : Marnie Papamatthaiou

English translation by Ermina Papadima