American teacher suggests to foreigners to learn Romanian so they can grow fond of Romanian lands

“If you want a foreigner to become a fan of Romania, teach him Romanian”, American teacher Keith Hitchins declared within the frameworks of a work visit to Chisinau, at the invitation of History, State and Law Institute of the Science Academy of Moldova (ASM). According to a press release of ASM, the professor declared at the meeting with historians that due to his specialization in East-European issues he started to learn the region’s languages. “I have immediately liked Romanian and I decided to study the history of the people which speaks it. I found that both Romanian language and history are extremely interesting”, Hitchins declared. Dr. Keith Hitchins graduated the Romanian Studies Institute from the Sorbonne University (1957-1958), where he also attended a course of old Romanian literature, lectured by a Romanian teacher. Starting 1960, he staid for 2 years in Romania as candidate for a doctor’s degree, learning about this country and its people. He passed his examination for doctor’s degree of history at Harvard University, taking as a subject “National Movement of Romanians in Transylvania”. He visited many times Romania in order to complete the data base about the history of this South-Eastern European country. Since 1969 he is a history teacher at the Illinois University, lecturing “Romania and South-Eastern Europe”. Dr. Hitchins is the author of a valuable history work which include over 30 monographs in English, French, German and Romanian, hundreds of articles and reviews. The majority of them were published by the well-known “Oxford University Press”, at the Encyclopedic Publishing House and that of the Romanian Cultural Foundation from Bucharest. At present, the professor is preparing a history of South-Eastern Europe for 1350-1800 and a history of the national Romanian movement in Transylvania, 1876-1914. Dr. Keith Hitchins was elected as an honorable member of the Romanian Academy (1991) Honoris Causa doctor of the University of Cluj (1991), of the University of Sibiu (1993) and of the Targu Mures University (2005).