Former Basque PM Ibarretxe visits SF, NY to open research center

Juan José Ibarretxe, former Basque President of the Basque Autonomous Community, is visiting the United States this week for the opening of the Lehendakari Agirre Center, a a collaborative project various University and Policy Research Centers including Columbia University and George Mason University, that will seek the creation of a think tank focused on the international projection of the Basque People and its extraordinary efforts towards sustainable human development.

Ibarretxe will be at the San Francisco Basque Cultural Center to give a presentation on the newly formed Lehendakari Agirre Center on Tuesday 19th. After San Francisco, the former Basque Premier will travel to New York to make a similar presentation Sunday at the Eusko Etxea New York Basque Club.

The LAC is named after the first democratically elected president of the Basque Country, Jose Antonio Agirre, who was a professor at Columbia University and thus the center will be a symbol of his legacy both in the United States and the Basque Country.

Dr. Juan Jose Ibarretxe, the person who led the Basque government for 10 years in which these decisions were made and who has made an academic contribution on the subject in a number of universities in the US, will chair the LAC.

The scope of the center will be to design, manage, develop and participate in multidisciplinary studies and research projects in the US, the Basque Country and throughout the world.

The center will be located at the Columbia University campus in New York City, George Mason University in Washington DC and in the Basque Country, with the possibility of reaching agreements with other regions of the world.