by Laurențiu Ștefan

Tuesday, November 25, was the day when I was called to make an impact on people’s minds (how pretentious!). Two events, side by side. I started the evening talking to students in political science about their future.

This brought me back in time during the years of my formation as political scientist in the early 1990s. What did I do when I was a student – I was asked. What jobs did I have while studying political science? What about scholarships?

I earned my life first as a teacher of mathematics in a Bucharest high-school until I got a scholarship to Rennes (France) in 1995 and this was a turning point in my professional career in at least two ways. First, I decided to quit my job at the high-school and more or less to terminate my brief career in mathematics (after five difficult years as a student of the Faculty of Mathematics, with a specialization in Computer Science). Definitely, my heart pushed me to the humanities and the social sciences, not in the hard sciences. Second, my studies in Rennes revealed to myself that I do not feel at ease with the so-called „continental” approach and made me seek opportunities to get exposed to the Anglo-Saxon world of political science. Third and probably the most consequential, this was the moment when I decided to dedicate myself to Romanian politics and not for example to European institutions (clearly a field welcomed with increasing interest by my colleagues).

I was jobless for almost a year before taking my first job in the area of social sciences. Late Professor Alexandru Dutu was keen on having me on board, if not in the fledgling Faculty of Political Sciences, at least at his Institute for South-East European Studies. I was briefly his personal assistant and editor of the Institute’s journal. He supervised my graduation thesis dedicated to Romania’s modernization in the nineteenth century. I was fascinated at that time by the theories of modernization „imported” to Romania by Stelian Tanase whom I had also the chance to work closely in those years – mid to late 1990s.

Translations for Sfera Politicii and for Polis, but also for Humanitas, took a lot of my energies at that moment and brought me some extra money. The bulk of my spare time was however dedicated to the editorial work for the quarterly Polis – a political science journal published by IMAS and now in the hands of the Faculty of Political Science, „Petre Andrei” University of Iasi. Below there is a link to the first issue that I took care of.

http://www.revistapolis.ro/images/arhiva/1995/4_1995.pdf

If you have the patience to download it, you may note that there is an issue dedicated to… elites. Read the introduction signed by Calin Atanasiu about the return from exile of political science concepts. In this case of the concept of „political elite”. Historians of Romanian political science may identify this issue of Polis as the first serious attempt to promote the study of political elites in Romania. Any relationship between the topic of this issue of Polis and my executive responsibilities on the board of Polis? I leave you the pleasure to answer this question. Mark the fact that this is where I published my first „serious” article and my first review.

The meeting with the political science students on Tuesday afternoon triggered therefore nice and warm memories about my beginnings as a  political scientist. I thank the Association of Political Science Students – University of Bucharest (ASSP-UB) and more particularly Laura Popa for inviting me. It was a real pleasure to meet old and new students. Antonio Momoc is now an accomplished teacher, researcher, writer and consultant and I was thrilled by his words about me. Thank you, Toni! I met some of my Romanian Political System students from last year and I may have met some of my future students. Greetings and good luck to all of them!