Relations between Europe and North America are at a crossroads. It is no longer taken for granted that politicians, policy-makers and other persons of influence in the US have an informed awareness of Europe; the generation of Americans who grew up during and after World War II and for whom the links between North America and Europe were natural and necessary is now retiring from public life. The same is true in Europe.

For this reason and also because of demographic and cultural changes within the US itself, the study of Europe – its history, languages and culture – is no longer a mainstay of educational programs in the United States. In high schools and in colleges it is not uncommon for students to graduate with only the flimsiest acquaintance with Europe. Moreover, there has grown up over the past generation a disturbing gap between scholarly specialization upon Europe on the one hand, and general knowledge among policy-makers and other non-academics on the other. European specialists in North American universities have all too often moved away from the study of broad issues of national or continental concern to work instead in restricted fields often inaccessible to outsiders. Such scholars are learned in their area of professional interest; but they frequently fail to address the broader interests and needs of students and the public. In the social sciences there has been in the past dec ade a steady movement towards sophisticated methodological and theoretical techniques that ignore countries and regions. The overall result is not only that the study of Europe, broadly conceived, has declined, but that the sort of scholarly expertise on which journalists, politicians, business and the arts might draw and with which they used to interact is much reduced.

Lastly, the events of 1989 and after in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe have shown just how important it is to have in the US people who understand the ‘other’ half of Europe – and how few they are. There is an urgent need to develop knowledge – both general and specialized – about Europe as a whole, and not just the western half of the continent. Universities and area-studies institutes, for so long concentrated upon western Europe, can not overnight acquire the same level of institutional support and specialized resources for teaching people about the eastern half. The Remarque Institute from its inception has treated the continent as a whole and works to disseminate understanding and awareness of all its constituent parts.