French Center of Excellence

A talk by Richard J. Golsan, University Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of French at Texas A&M University. 

Following the horrific 2015-2016 Islamist terrorist attacks in France that killed that killed some 230 people and wounded hundreds if not thousands more, France staged three massive and historic trials of the surviving perpetrators of the attacks and their accomplices. What were the aims of these trials? Where did they succeed, and where did they fall short of their goals? What did they reveal about justice, and especially anti-terrorist justice in France? How did they compare in their conduct and outcomes with other recent historic trials in France, especially the 1987 trial of the Nazi Klaus Barbie and the trials of French collaborators in the Holocaust in the 1990s? 

Ambassador Philippe Etienne will be in Lawrence Sept. 12 for a morning event with faculty and students from the department. The ambassador will be accompanied by the French Consul General in Chicago, Yannick Tagand. The visit is in recognition of the department being designated a “Center of Excellence” by the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Centers of Excellence (Centres d’Excellence) were established by the French government to promote French culture in American universities and increase ties between scholars, artists and public intellectuals in France and the U.S. With this designation, KU joins a short list of the most prestigious colleges in the country, including Ivy League universities like Brown, Princeton, Harvard and Yale, as well as state universities like the University of California at Los Angeles, the Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin.