Pardee School Hosts Celebration of Retiring Professor Goldstein
On December 12, 2022, Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies hosted a lecture and reception in honor of Erik Goldstein, Professor of International Relations and History at the Pardee School, who is retiring at the end of 2022.
The event celebrated Goldstein and his many years of service to the Pardee School, its precursor, the Department of International Relations, and Boston University as a whole. In introducing Goldstein’s remarks, Scott Taylor, Dean and Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School, laid out his colleague’s prestigious career at BU, which began in 1998 as a professor of history. He would soon serve as Chair of the Department of International Relations, a role he held for 12 years. Echoing remarks made in Goldstein’s honor at the Pardee School 2022 convocation ceremony, Taylor said, “in celebrating Erik Goldstein, I’d like to focus first on his character. He stands out in this era of moral flexibility because he’s a decent human being. He is comfortable with people, and they’re comfortable with him. First-year students and university presidents alike, found him to be the person to seek when they needed advice. They appreciated his wisdom, insight, humor, and his ability to listen. He was unfailingly logical, rational, and empathetic.”
Before an audience of colleagues, current and former students, as well as honored guests, Goldstein delivered a final lecture titled “World Heritage: Diplomacy and the Origins of an Ideal.” In it, he discussed the Congress of Vienna, the restoration of cultural objects after war or periods of great devastation, as well as how this practice of cultural restitution has also served as public diplomacy. Looting of cultural objects has been a practice of war and colonization for centuries, but the ending of WWI marked a historic shift; Goldstein explained that the establishment of the League of Nations was the first instance of global governance on heritage perseverance and cultural property. He would go on to address questions regarding modern issues of cultural restitution, how certain objects become labeled as “cultural objects,” as well as the diplomatic failures of the practice.
Goldstein will retire from the Pardee School at the end of this calendar year, at which point he will be conferred the title of Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History. We wish him all the best and hope he continues to engage with our community for years to come.
Erik Goldstein’s research interests include diplomacy, formulation of national diplomatic strategies, the origins and resolution of armed conflict, and negotiation. He is the author of The Road to Pearl Harbor: Great Power War in Asia and the Pacific (2022); Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1916-1920 (1991); Wars and Peace Treaties (1992); and The First World War’s Peace Settlements: International Relations, 1918 – 1925 (2002, Italian translation, 2004). To learn more about Professor Goldstein, visit his Pardee School faculty profile.