”Institutes for advanced studies” are an investment in the future. Financed either by states, from private sources or sponsored by independent or combined ones, they all have preserved their independence and have started up from the same source: The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, New Jersey, set up in 1930, one of the few international institutions in which knowledge is an aim in itself. The strong belief of Abraham Flexner’s, the founder of the institute, was that research work, the very basis of understanding man and humanity, needs a special milieu that should enable the promotion of ideas and encourage strong interpersonalinteraction. The special environment offered by the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study has been extremely beneficial for a large range of researchers, great winners of the Nobel prize in physics, chemistry, medicine, economy. Among them: Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.
The model imposed at Princeton by a young, courageous nation has been taken over in many places in the United States of America, i.e. California (Stanford University), North Carolina (Duke University, North Carolina State University), Massachusetts (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge) and was adopted, in turn, by older nations that may have lost for a moment the courage to look far into the future, e.g.
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, e.g. was founded in Wassenaar, in 1970.
Israel Institute for Advanced Studies was set up in Jerusalem in 1975.
Berlin Institute for Advanced Study appeared in Grunewald in 1981.
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study was founded in Uppsala, in 1985.
Only recently set up, the network of French institutes for advanced studies - Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille – are open for all, and their firm objective is to generate higher international visibility of French humanistic sciences.
Why should not Romania dare to be part of this concern of visionary nations as long as her people are one of her special resources and thousands of young brains enrich the intellectual landscape of their adoptive countries? The opportunity/occasion came forward when Emil Constantinescu, member in the Board of WAAS - an academic forum founded by Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, John Fleming and Yehudi Menuhin 70 years ago– has convinced his colleagues to accept the foundation of such a centre of excellence in Bucharest.It took several years and much effort to remove all the obstacles, but the Institute The Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization was founded by the Romanian Parliament through Bill no. 117 / 26 May 2017, published in the Official Gazette no. 404 / 30 May 2017.
