ear Jean-Claude, Mr. President, dear friends and colleagues,

I could not help thinking of a very famous quotation by Montaigne when I thought of tonight’s celebration : “because it was him, because it was me”. To say the truth, this quotation occurred to me not so much as such, but rather under the form of a question : “because it is him – I mean, you Jean-Claude – but why me ?”

And to this interrogation, I must modestly admit that I have the answer. I know that I kept from my PHD in philosophy some of the habit of philosophers to brag about having the answers to the questions they have themselves raised. But for this time, I feel that my own answer is definitely objective : it is obvious that I am compelled under the present circumstances to make an allusion to the little paper I wrote two weeks ago for our French School newsletter, La Gazette, where I detailed the many ways French people have to say “good bye”. I will not indulge in the academic habit of self-quotation, and rather than summing up this article, I just would like share with all of you, my conclusion : it is about impossible to say a proper good bye in French, because it depends of so many circumstances, the time, and even the feeling of the moment. And, to speak my mind (and my heart), it is just as appropriate, here. Good bye is no word for this evening.

That was the “me” part (sorry about having done what is never to be done in French, starting with the ego). Now, let us turn to the other and most important part of my quotation, the “he” part — it is still you, Jean-Claude. As any valuable topic, it is a difficult one (as a French author of the 18^e century put it, “the king is not a subject”) ; and it is all the more difficult for me, because the very thing I have to tell about Jean-Claude is precisely that he is the kind of man who will always be ahead of whatever I would like to say about him. This, of course, is to be expected from a director who displayed tremendous leadership qualities. To lead is to be ahead, that makes perfect sense, both at the level of managerial skills and at the level of English semantic. However, I was not making an allusion to Jean-Claude’s professional qualities, but rather to more personal details that I got acquainted with when I got to know him better at Middlebury College.

No more was I referring to the kind of remoteness that is sometimes imposed through a style of governance. Far from it ! We all appreciate the warmness, the close relationship, and the humorous dynamism Jean-Claude brings to his high sense of responsibility and how he extends them to everyone, the students, the administration, all the colleagues.

No, my feeling of a distance between Jean-Claude and whatever can be said to celebrate his time at the head of Middlebury College French Summer School is of a special kind. I would fail to describe it properly without using the concepts of... physics : to put it in a nutshell, Jean-Claude is not the man of an Euclidean space. He belongs to an einsteinium time-space of life, where he takes you, and where things are where they are supposed to be but also somewhere else at the same time. Let me give a few examples of this bizarre phenomenon.

At first, it all sounded completely synchronized. As it is the case with any proper French story, we met in Paris, and as it is the case in any good academic story, more precisely in the Latin Quarter area, two blocks away from the prestigious Sorbonne where Jean-Claude teaches, not very far from the school where I studied myself, less a mile from the university where I thenhad my position. But right away, we entered another space-time which the formula “Middlebury College Summer School” suitably encapsulates. Indeed, Middlebury College is in itself an Einsteinium space for it is not only a place to learn languages, it is a way to experience them (this little speech is some sort of a proof of this, among many). And, while letting us experience languages and the behaviors linked with them, Middlebury College becomes a place which is at the crossing of places and countries, civilizations and languages, times and spaces.

So, from this Parisian winter we were beamed up to the Vermont summer during this conversation we had with Jean-Claude and Guy. This slight décalé was to be repeated under many forms in the years after, when I interacted with Jean-Claude. Every time I talked with him of a place where we had been we, fatally, ended up talking of a new one where I did not know he had been. And since we have been talking quite extensively, this means a lot of places.

This einsteinium rule does not apply only to places, but also to activities. Of Jean-Claude for instance, the easiest is to say that he is a renowned specialist of British civilization. I will not insist on the fact that for an ordinary Frenchman, the discovery that there is a British civilization is still more difficult to understand than Relativity. But, with Jean-Claude, British civilization is not confined in the borders of Great Britain. It means the whole sphere of influence of Great Britain, and an equal attention paid to the Commonwealth. British civilization is a universe in expansion...

So, I was settled down in my impression that with Jean-Claude, there was always more to discover. And that was the case, when I realized that not only satisfied with British civilization, he is also a great actor of Francophonie. Einstein discovered that light was both a corpuscular entity and a wave. With Jean-Claude, we understand that civilization can be both British and French...

As it were, in an einsteinium universe, time is just another face of space. So could I say anything of your time, Jean-Claude, at the head of our School that would be at the right place ? Perhaps, I should mention something, but unfortunately, it is something that you have to be a Francophone to share fully. In our language, “Time” and “Weather” are just the same word. Jean-Claude, with you, we have had such a great time at the French School. But we also had such a fine weather. For all Francophones will tell you : the true sun of Vermont, when you are around, is the wonderful accent you bring from your southern place of Birth in France.

As I say, good bye is no word for tonight. But there is a word that is at the right place and at the right time.

This word is merci !

Prof. Thierry Leterre Vice President, UVSQ, France.