NEWS

On October 2, 2022, FOS held a webinar on Jozef Tiso’s Leadership of the Slovak State During World War II and the “Jewish Question.” The featured speaker was Madeline Vadkerty, program coordinator at the Holocaust Documentation Center in Bratislava.  J. Luke Ryder, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, moderated the webinar.  Before moving to Bratislava, […]

Written by Dr. Elizabeth Guran, FOS Board Member The Ukraine War and its impact on democratic societies was the topic of the final Student Summit sponsored by Friends of Slovakia and its partners at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Over 60 students from Matej Bel University, […]

This report was prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Guran, chair of the FOS Committee on Academic Exchanges. The Friends of Slovakia (FOS) International Student Summits are off and running! Two successful virtual summits were held in 2021 and a third summit will occur in April 2022. All three events address the theme, “Challenges of Democracy.” The […]

FOS is thrilled to announce the launch of an exciting new program that aims to foster understanding, engagement, and friendship between university students from the United States and Slovakia. This unique initiative has been developed by the FOS Student Exchange Committee led by Dr. Elizabeth Guran (committee chair), and supported by other committee members including […]

November 2019 marked the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent events that brought freedom from communist domination to many countries of the former “Soviet-bloc.”  In Czechoslovakia, public demonstrations, spearheaded by student movements, sparked the relatively peaceful downfall of the communist government and began the country’s “return to the West,” […]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2019, a forum titled Velvet @ 30: A Legacy to Uphold was held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The forum was co-sponsored by the Czech and Slovak Embassies in collaboration with Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.  The event featured welcoming remarks by Joel Hellman, Dean of the Walsh […]

FOS Board members and others in the Washington foreign policy and Slovak-interest communities participated in a roundtable featuring former Slovak Ambassador Martin Bútora and his spouse, sociologist Dr. Zora Bútorová.  The ambassadorial couple served in Washington, DC from 1999-2003 and had a significant impact on Slovak-U.S. relations, as well as opening Slovakia’s new embassy building […]

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had a significant impact on Eastern Europe’s political scene. In Czechoslovakia, the Communist regime was replaced by a democratic revolution, which was led by student movements and dissidents. November 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, a non-violent transition of power with demonstrations against the […]

The 2014 Scholars were welcomed to Washington with an informal reception on June 15. Hosted by Board member Scott Thayer and his wife Nena amidst their gardens and ponds, the reception also benefited from unseasonably comfortable weather. The Scholars celebrated the end of their first week of classes while enjoying Slovak beer and international nibbles […]

Friends of Slovakia was able to sponsor five very deserving Slovak Scholars to attend one of the Fund for American Studies (TFAS) summer institutes in Washington, DC at George Mason University. To honor these students and introduce them to FOS members and the embassy staff, Amb. Peter Kmec and FOS co-hosted a luncheon at the […]