PITT NAMES NEW DIRECTOR FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CENTER

PITTSBURGH, June 12 -- William I. Brustein, the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, has been named director of the University Center for International Studies (UCIS) at the University of Pittsburgh.

In addition, Brustein will join the Pitt faculty in the Department of Sociology within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and as a UCIS professor.

Brustein's appointment is effective January 1, 2001. He replaces Burkart Holzner, who served as director of UCIS since 1980. A professor of sociology, Holzner intends to remain at Pitt, where he will continue to teach and pursue research opportunities.

In announcing the appointment, Provost James V. Maher said, "Pitt has established a position of prominence in the arena of international education, a position that benefits not only the university, its faculty and staff, but the western Pennsylvania region as well.

"I have great confidence in Dr. Brustein's ability to provide the leadership that will ensure the maintenance and strengthening of the international dimension at the University of Pittsburgh."

Brustein earned a B.A. in political science at the University of Connecticut, master's degrees in sociology at the University of Washington and in international studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a doctorate in sociology at the University of Washington.

After serving as associate professor of sociology at the University of Utah, Brustein accepted a position in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. In 1992, Brustein began serving as director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Minnesota and, from 1995, he chaired that school's Department of Sociology. He was a visiting scholar at the Free University of Berlin in 1989 and at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1999.

Brustein has international stature as a scholar of historical sociology. He received awards for his exceptional teaching while at Utah and Minnesota and was elected to the prestigious Sociological Research Association. His most recent book, The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933, won the 1997 James S. Coleman Distinguished Contribution to Rational-Choice Scholarship from the American Sociological Association, Rational-Choice Section.

Founded in 1968, UCIS cultivates, supports, and coordinates international activities campus-wide at the University of Pittsburgh. UCIS has worked to establish Pitt's leadership role in the advancement of global dimensions in the arts, sciences, and professions. The center's work encompasses education, research, and public service, and draws on vast and historic international resources, concerns, and ties.

UCIS harbors four internationally recognized area studies centers, each designated a National Resource Center by the US Department of Education. The area centers include the Asian Studies Program, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and the Center for West European Studies, which also has been designated as one of 10 European Union Centers in the United States. In addition to these nationally-recognized centers, Pitt also is the home of the International Business Center (IBC), a joint venture of the Katz School of Business and UCIS, also federally funded and recognized as a Center of Excellence.

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