Beckie Loewenstein

Jose Ramos-Horta: We had to deal with the psychological, emotional trauma of twenty-four years of violence, compounded by the most recent one, the 1999 violence. We had to start a process of national healing and reconciliation.

Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship The Legatum Lecture Series Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA September 29, 2009 Thank you for the invitation by the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship in bringing me here. This is not first time I come to MIT and I came here over the years. I came here in 80s and 90s to meet with the great professor from here, the only academic at the time who spoke thoroughly about East Timor throughout the U.S. and in the world, and that was Noam Chomsky--who obviously became even more famous, if he were not already famous enough when Hugo Chavez made reference to his book in a TV interview in New York a year, two years ago. I wish I had given a book of mine to Hugo Chavez.

The kindness of Jewish strangers in a Brookline neighborhood guided me through Rosh Hashanah on September 18, 2009. I began the Jewish new year 5770 with a walk from Cleveland Circle Station down Beacon Street to Coolidge Corner.