THOUSAND OAKS : Baltic Scholars to Visit Universities

Nine Baltic scholars will learn how the American university system works when they participate in next month’s Baltic Institute at Cal Lutheran University.

The selected professors are from the three former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are collectively known as the Baltics. The second annual institute, underwritten by the United States Information Service, runs from Saturday through July 24 at the Thousand Oaks campus.

“The whole idea of university instruction as we know it here didn’t exist” in the former Soviet Union, said Jaak Treiman, an honorary consul to Estonia and one of the institute’s planners. “Many courses were essentially political indoctrination. They have to learn everything all over again.”

The scholars will visit eight university campuses within a 70-mile radius of Cal Lutheran, including Caltech in Pasadena, Pepperdine University and UCLA. They also will attend workshops and classes at Cal Lutheran, reading texts such as Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”

“Some of these scholars have an intuitive feel for how a university trains people to work in a democratic setting,” Treiman said. “But nothing replaces firsthand experience.”