Ewald Nowotny Nostalgia and Pride The Academic Forum for Foreign Affairs in the 60s.
It is with great pleasure that I follow AFA's request to contribute some recollections of the activities of AFA's predecessor in the 1960's, the Akademische Vereinigung für Außenpolitik (AVA). Austria at this time was in many respects much less open than it is today.

The group of young students that formed AVA therefore had the feeling of being kind of an avant-garde, in a way, we tried to increase the interest of our fellow students in foreign - and especially UN-affairs. AVA, by the way, played an important role in the campaign to establish political science as an independent course of studies in Austria by setting up lectures with American scholars, organizing petitions, etc. But AVA also was a good training-ground for getting first practical experiences in formal international contacts. Thus we organized the first Model United Nations ever held in Vienna. Looking back two aspects stand out as the most important impacts AVA had on my life. The first is a vivid interest in foreign affairs, which has lasted to this day. Now even more than in the 60ies, the international dimension is part of every aspect of life - not only from a professional point of view but also concerning the personal ambition of being an open-minded, intellectually active human being. The second permanent impact of AVA are the many life-long friendships that developed from our common interests and activities. We were a group of students from very different social and political backgrounds and AVA taught us to work together not only in tolerance but in friendship and mutual understanding.

Pictures from the 1st AVA-Alumni Meeting in January 1994