Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser will arrive here today to officially present a $1 million gift establishing an Australian Studies Endowment fund at the University.
Fraser will join President Bok at noon in the Yard to sign a "memorandum of understanding" establishing the fund.
The program will enable Harvard to create a professorship in Australian studies and sponsor visiting Australian scholars.
I Hate Qantas
The purpose of the fund, according to the memorandum that Bok and Fraser will sign, "is to establish a Chair in Australian Studies and maintain such teaching research and publication as will help promote awareness and understanding of Australia in the United States of America."
In addition to the signing, Fraser will hold a press conference with Dean Rosovsky at 2:30 p.m. in the Faculty club.
The endowment is Australia's largest single contribution to the celebration of the U.S. bicentennial.
At approximately 11:45 a.m., after a private meeting in Massachusetts Hall, Fraser, Bok and Nicholas Parkinson, the Australian ambassador to the United States, will walk across the old yard to University Hall.
The area between Mass and UHalls will be cordoned off to viewers when the entourage crosses the Yard.
Former Australian prime minister E. Gough Whitlam originally presented this gift on July 4, 1975, as part of what he called Australia's role in celebrating the United States bicentennial.
Whitlam, speaking at the Australian-American Ball in Sydney, Australia last year, commended "this proposal to the great companies and corporation--which operate in the two countries. Some of them, I trust, will see the chair as a focal point for further research endowments in their own names in disciplines of special interest to them."
Read more in News
Money makes the world go roundRecommended Articles
-
Driving Over DivisionsW hen President Neil L. Rudenstine took office in 1991, the first thing he did was hit the brakes. In
-
Alum Named New Yorker’s Managing EditorFormer Crimson editor Amelia E. Lester ’05 has been named managing editor of The New Yorker. The 26-year-old previously worked
-
Aboriginal Expert Joins Harvard FacultyMick Dodson, a law professor and director of the Australian National University’s National Centre for Indigenous Studies, has been appointed the next chair of Harvard’s Committee on Australian Studies.
-
Tennis Assistant Butorac Falls In Aussie SemisHarvard men’s tennis volunteer assistant coach Eric Butorac was on a quest to end up on top Down Under. Unfortunately ...
-
Australian Laureate Murray Meditates on Nature and DialectIn his 1999 poem “The Instruments,” Australian poet Les Murray wrote, “Poetry is read by lovers of poetry / and ...
-
The Word: MisèreI first learnt about “misère,” which is betting in a card game that you’ll lose every hand in order to ...