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John Peter
Maher is a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, having retired in June
1993 from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. In the 1970s
he was a tenured Professor of English linguistics at the University
of Hamburg, Germany. he speaks Serbo-Croatian, German, and Italian,
and reads several other languages. 2. In 1958, after completion of basic training and the course for
Special Agent, Counter Intelligence Corps, US Army, in conjunction
with his interest in the Slavic world he volunteered for a one-year
course in the Serbo Croatian language, completing this with honors.
He was thereupon assigned to the 430th Military Intelligence
Battalion, SETAF (Southeast Europe Task Force), stationed in Vicenza
and Verona, Italy, from May 1959 to May 1961. He was assigned to the
Yugoslav desk of this unit. He had two MOSs (Military Occupation
Specialties), Special Agent CIC and Interpreter-Translator
(Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian) and translated documents into English
from these languages, as well as Italian and German. In the years
that followed he continued to study the geography, history,
demography, and politics of the countries of central and south
central Europe. In September 1966 he served as Fulbright lecturer at
the University of Tmava, Czechoslovakia, and from October 1966 to
February 1967 at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. He spent a
semester's sabbatical in 1970 in regions of Austria and Italy
adjacent to Yugoslavia and home to the indigenous minority Slovenian
minority populations. 3. In 1989 he was awarded a Fulbright lectureship at the University
of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He taught there from February to
July 1990. This was a year before the outbreak of war stemming from
the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina from
Yugoslavia. The outbreak of war in Yugoslavia in 1991 intensified
his interests. In 1992, 1993, 1994 1997 he again traveled to former
Yugoslavia, and has continued to follow developments in the press,
on television, short wave radio, and satellite television from
Yugoslavia. 4. In March 1992 he traveled to Serbia, Monte Negro, Bosnia-Her-zegovina,
Dalmatia (Croatia). He spoke with plain citizens, officials, church
dignitaries, soldiers, and scholars. 5. In March 1993 he visited Serbia, including Pristina, Kosovo, and
talked there with the mayor and ministers of health, education, and
information. In Belgrade he had an audience with the Serbian
Orthodox Patriarch Pavle;. He also interviewed Bishop Jovan,
Metropolitan of Zagreb (Croatia) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). 6. In April 1994 he traveled to Serbia and the western Serb lands of
Serb Bosnia, and Krajina (Croatia), to get an up-date on the
problems of Serbs in Croatia and Slovenia. 7. In September 1997 he traveled to Hungary as an invited faculty
member of a symposium, termed "Budapest University", of the Young
Presidents Organization. |
