On September 15, the Cosmopolitan Club received the City of Champaign 2005 International Humanitarian Award. This award was presented to Judith Gordon, President of the Board of Directors, and several Cosmo house residents, on behalf of the Cosmopolitan Club, by Champaign Mayor Gerald Schweighart during a ceremony at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The following remarks were made by Cosmopolitan Club member Hans Hock just before the award presentation.
An urban myth, current in Champaign-Urbana, is that Cosmopolitan Club was founded or co-founded by Rabindranath Tagore, famous Indian poet, writer, painter, and Nobel Prize winner. According to the myth, Tagore stated that Champaign-Urbana had too much agriculture and not enough culture, and that Cosmo Club was needed to remedy the situation.
As all urban myths, this one, too, is just that — a myth. What we do know is that Cosmo Club was founded in 1907 by a group of University of Illinois faculty and students and that this group included the son of Rabindranath Tagore. We also know that the Club was one of a large number of Cosmopolitan Clubs that were being founded across the United States at that time. And we know that from the beginning, the Club’s inspiring motto was “Above All Nations Is Humanity.”
Unlike most of the other Cosmopolitan Clubs, however, our Cosmo Club has survived for almost a century, and not just survived. Especially after its reincarnation at 307 East John Street in Champaign, it has made extraordinary contributions to international awareness and understanding and, yes, culture in Champaign-Urbana.
It is justly famous for the events that it hosts, ranging from weekly international coffee hours, to monthly international dinners, and a very American Thanksgiving dinner. There are parties to enjoy, lectures to learn more about the world and each other, and excursions to sites of local interest as well as of broad cultural significance. As if this weren’t enough, Cosmo also offers a home for international and American students to live, cook, and eat with each other, and to make friendships that last long after they have left and dispersed all over the world.
Cosmo’s reach goes even farther. Its annual Thanksgiving Dinner is not just a time for international students to enjoy this quintessentially American feast and for American participants to learn about similar harvest festivals in other parts of the world. It is also a benefit event, whose proceeds support causes around the world, such as buying books for a small rural school in Africa or for a kindergarten for street children in Peru, donating money for earthquake victims in Mexico and flood victims in India, or helping to buy materials for an adult-education reading program in Champaign-Urbana.
Even without a Rabindranath Tagore to tell it to do so, the Cosmopolitan Club, thus, goes far beyond the noble task of serving as a place for students, faculty, and members of the Champaign-Urbana community to meet, break bread together, and broaden their understanding of the world and of themselves — through its relief efforts at home and in the world, it lives up gloriously to its motto “Beyond All Nations Is Humanity”.
It has done so for nearly a century. Please join me in thanking them for doing so and in expressing our warmest hopes and wishes for at least another century.
Hans Hock is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Sanskrit, in the Program in South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. Professor Hock's research and teaching interests focus on Sanskrit and its relation to other South Asian languages.
Judith Gordon and Mousse Koné admiring the
International Humanitarian Award sculpture
Cosmo Club residents and members of the Board of the Directors
at the award ceremony
L to R:
Moussa Konè, Youngjae Lee, Felix Autenrieth,
Sayuri Koda, Ana Maria Popa, and Ajay Sikander Singh
at the International Humanitarian Award banquet