Princeton students and faculty part of the Tesla Year of Tesla People

As Ljiljana Nikšić, ambassador in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Tanjug, the visit took place on the occasion of celebrating the “Tesla Year of the Tesla People”, in a campaign aimed at strengthening Serbian-American friendship and diplomatic relations between Serbia and the USA, and the visit to the Museum was an opportunity and that Serbs and Americans born in 1999 meet for the first time – the millennial generation that does not remember “bumps and collisions” because it did not participate in them.

On this occasion, the Princetonians were greeted by the First Vice-President of the Government of Serbia and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivica Dacic, who at a solemn ceremony presented the symbolic Tesla diplomatic passports to conductor Maestro Michael Jackson Pratt, and the titles of Tesla ambassadors were also given to the doyens of the orchestra born in 1999, Natalija Erbelaz Solano, Izbel an and Jia Watson.

In order to deepen the academic cooperation between the University of Belgrade and Princeton University, the Dean of the Faculty of Music Ljiljana Nestorovska presented the Draft Protocol on Cooperation to Maestro Prat, the conductor and music director of the Princeton University Orchestra.

At the ceremony, Prat was also presented with a musical score with the notes of Far Away and March on the Drina.

The visit to the Museum was organized thanks to the first American Tesla Ambassador, Reid Benn, a Princeton alumni, who interned at the White House, and is now a Fulbright scholar on internship in Belgrade.

Ambassador Nikšić, the national coordinator of the campaign, emphasized that the Princeton University Orchestra’s concert in Tesla’s Year of the Tesla People is more than a concert, because it represents a noble mission of spreading friendship between two peoples who inherit the tradition of more than 200 years of friendship, the only discontinuity of which was in the 1990s with a tragic outcome. bombings in 1999.

From the ashes of that year 1999, a generation of those who will build the future of Serbian-American diplomatic relations, understanding, cooperation and granite friendship, which were left to us as a legacy by our ancestors crowned with glory who fought shoulder to shoulder in both the First and Second World Wars shoulder, and the first American volunteer, a certain Felix Whiter, participated in the Serbian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, she said.

On that occasion, the Dictionary of Serbian-American Friendship was read, and the students of Princeton and the Belgrade faculties of music, mechanical engineering and law then formed an unbreakable chain of Serbian-American friendship, linking hands and sending a message of the connection of Tesla’s people – Serbs and Americans.

Ambassador Nikšić began the reading of the Dictionary of Friendship, quoting Tesla’s words: “if hatred could be turned into electricity, there would be enough energy for the whole world. Therefore, only when the power of love prevails, love of power, will there be universal peace.”

Among the words read are: love, trust, sacrifice, freedom, victims, heroes, and the conclusion in the Dictionary is “Tesla’s people are brotherly people”.

Ambassador Nikšić presented 10 points that Serbs and Americans must know about each other, such as, for example, that in 1814, more than two hundred years ago, the first registered Serb in America was Đorđe Šagić, and the first American volunteer was Felix Whiter, while On February 1, 1881, more than 140 years ago, diplomatic relations were established, and in 1918, the Serbian flag flew on the White House.