In 1975-76, I was a Fulbright scholar in Germany, teaching for a year at a German university. It was close enough in time to the Holocaust to stir feelings of fear (some professors still dressed up in SS uniforms on weekends).

But it was also a time of hope: The European common market would be created; the Berlin Wall would fall. And a time of transition: wars giving way to rebuilding and working together. The Fulbright grants were, in fact, created to promote international understanding.

Now, it suddenly seems as if a half-century’s work is coming undone, that democracy will fail, people will be out of work, out of safety nets, homeless. How can this have happened?

Judith Davidov

Leverett