06/25/2024
For many Americans, mention of the Transylvania region of Romania during the 19th century conjures images of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and all the gothic Hollywood stereotypes it inspired.
Not Alexandru Balas, a professor of international studies at SUNY Cortland. He understands that, beneath the surface of pop culture, the region’s culture and history was greatly enriched as a major trade route at the crossroads of Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe. He knows the stories of the Romanian people of that time who helped mediate conflict among more powerful neighbors and bravely endured extreme hardship traveling perilous trade routes to India.
“In these travelogues that I study, I like that these people write about the difficulties of traveling, and also that they’re doing it because they want to get out of their comfort zone,” Balas said.
“It’s important to challenge ourselves, to get a little bit out of our comfort zone. I mean, that’s in many ways academia. What we’re trying to do is challenge our students and challenge ourselves too, quite often.”
Balas’ desire for challenge recently resulted in a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in international relations and intercultural communication to Romania for the 2024-25 academic year.
Fulbright U.S. Scholars are faculty, researchers, administrators and established professionals who are supported by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to teach or conduct research in more than 160 countries, worldwide.
Balas since 2013 has directed the university’s James M. Clark Center for Global Engagement, which for 24 years has aimed to advance international education, service and scholarship on campus, and coordinates the SUNY Cortland’s International Studies Program.
In the coming year, he will teach courses in international relations and intercultural communication at SUNY Cortland’s longtime international partner institution, Babes-Bolyai University in Romania’s second largest city, Cluj-Napoca.
“In many ways, whenever one of us go to a different university, we’re ambassadors for SUNY Cortland,” Balas said. “What we do reflects on the entire university.”
When not instructing within Babes-Bolyai’s College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, Balas plans to organize Ph.D. program workshops on the quantitative research methods commonly used in the U.S. and advise faculty and students on how American scholars advance themselves in the academic marketplace.
While in Romania, Balas also will research academic topics related to future book chapters, including:
- The life and travels of a19th century Transylvanian-born woman enslaved in the Ottoman Empire. Sold to an English gentleman, who married her, she dedicated her life to abolishing Great Britian’s slave trade with East Africa.
- George Mantello, formerly Gyorgy Mandel, a Transylvanian Jew who saved about 200,000 people from the Nazis during the Holocaust by establishing them with new names as El Salvadoran citizens.
- An analysis of some 20 negotiationsrelating to the role of Transylvania, Moldova and Wallachia — the three principalities forming today’s Romania — in mediating conflicts between Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungary during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In addition Balas, assisted by SUNY Cortland international studies major Victoria Quick, who is studying abroad in fall 2024 at Babes-Bolyai University, will begin setting up next year’s Global Model European Union experience, to take place there with 100 international student participants. Balas has organized this annual international hands-on learning opportunity before, most recently in Brussels, Belgium.
In November, he’ll take part in the Romanian university’s conference on conflict resolution, co-organized with SUNY Cortland.
Born in Romania, Balas is fluent in Romanian, English, French and Italian; proficient in Spanish, Catalan and Turkish; and has basic knowledge of the German, Arabic and Portuguese languages.
He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in political science in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where he specialized in international relations and comparative politics. Balas has an M.A. in conflict analysis and resolution from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and a B.A. in political science from the University of Bucharest in Romania.
Balas is only the latest of 14 SUNY Cortland faculty members to win a spot in the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program since 1962-1963, but the university’s most recent award recipient since 2007-08, according to the Fulbright website. Those scholars traveled to a wide range of countries including South Korea, Namibia, Germany, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Malaysia and United Kingdom. The university has also sent seven Fulbright Visiting Scholars abroad for the sake of research and service, in addition to having dispatched numerous faculty members abroad on more limited Fulbright Grants.
Balas is glad to advise and write recommendation letters on behalf of colleagues interested in pursuing their own Fulbright.
“I applied because I was inspired by the Fulbright experience of SUNY Cortland Emeritus President Jim Clark, and reminded of this opportunity when we had visiting professors from Babes-Bolyai University in April 2023,” Balas said of the visitors. The contingent visited SUNY Cortland using Erasmus+ Key Action One Mobility grants, which come from the European Commission’s EU program for education, training, youth and sport. As part of the same program, other professors from the same university will visitSUNY Cortland for the first three weeks of the fall semester to learn more on the inner workings of an American university. Fourteen SUNY Cortland professors and staff members have participated in week-long Erasmus+ Key Action One mobilities at Babes-Bolyai University over the last few years.
“One of their strength is they do a really good job of connecting with the local community,” he said of Babes-Bolyai, which he described as Romania’s top-ranked university set in a large college town of some 50,000 students comprising a quarter of the local community of some 200,000 citizens.
“We’re lucky, because of people here who have worked hard to establish ties with Babes-Bolyai,” Balas said of colleagues, noting SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus Henry Steck, and the current and most recent directors of International Programs, Daniela Baban Hurrle and Mary Schlarb. Helping Balas obtain this Fulbright award were SUNY Cortland and the individuals SUNY Distinguished Professor Sharon Steadman, Modern Languages Department Chair Codruta Temple, Dean of Arts and Sciences Bruce Mattingly, Provost Ann McClellan and President Erik J. Bitterbaum.