Intelligentsia International Inc.

04/28/2024

Nargis and I will miss our dear friend, Juan Vitali who passed away on February 19.

Juan and I met in 1986 as graduate students at University of Florida. A year or so later we ended up sharing a house. We spent so much time together working on campus projects and student politics that we figured that it just made sense to turn a house into the UF subversive HQ. In that place we organized a long list of incredibly interesting and consequential projects, many of which continue at UF to this day.

Juan did so much at UF that it is simply impossible to recount it all. To have so much intelligence and integrity in an assertive organizing powerhouse like Juan is incredibly rare. He inspired all those around him to do all they could, and then more. One year he earned our house the honor of hosting John Lombardi for the traditional UF President’s dinner with students. Juan cooked. As if the list of things Juan was good at wasn’t already long enough, Juan was a great Italian chef.

And then there was another story when Juan went on a trip to Rome, Italy. Unfortunately, the Gainesville airport sent his bags to Rome, Georgia. But while Juan was away, our undergraduate housemate, Ilya Solarev, newly arrived from the Soviet Union, tried to roll Juan’s car out of the carport to wash it. Since no good deed goes unpunished, Juan’s open door caught a bush and wrenched towards the front bumper. Upon his return, Juan took it in stride. But I will never forget Ilya’s misery at having had good intentions end badly.

After college Juan and I continued to be friends and teamed up to manage the national graduate student honor society. Juan’s career led him to the Pentagon and then the White House. But he remained the most sincere, caring person you ever met. Like my other DC friends, Juan and his wife Katie would always offer me a place to stay during trips to the area. It was always a pleasure spending time with them.

During a 2022 visit to DC at the peak of cherry blossom season, Juan and I shared breakfast with Richard Grosso at an outdoor place in DuPont Circle, after which we walked the neighborhood on that beautiful spring morning. I dropped Juan off for a White House meeting. When I picked him up a few hours later he had with him a bag of White House swag, including a shirt for my daughter, Amina. Nargis loves that shirt and the opportunity it gave her for some fun photos.

Nargis and I both cherish Juan’s memory. We extend our sincerest condolences to his wife Katie.

Katie was amazing at the memorial mass on March 15. It was a solemn event but followed by a joyous celebration of Juan's life at the church reception and the gathering at their home. Juan was such a fortunate man to have found Katie. He always knew it and openly expressed this love.

At the church reception, I was drawn to one table among the dozen or more, where two fellows were seated. Turned out that of the 60 or more people in the room, they were the only two others from Juan's UF student days, neither of whom I could have possibly recognized. Fate or guiding hand? Other special friends & colleagues of Juan's joined us for a most moving set of conversations of the past and of those things yet to come from Juan's life and endeavors.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:linkedInArticle:7190245860738281472/

01/01/2024

On January 28, Intelligentsia International directors (Dr. John Capece) will participate in a panel discussion following a screening of "The Urgency of Now" short film by former Collier County Waterkeeper KC Schulberg. Sign up for event reminders at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZKKNg3Ba9I

12/14/2023

Michal Fidler took so many great photos at the UN climate conference. The Invading See published a few of them along with some captions. We fly home tomorrow.

The 28th edition of the U.N. conference, commonly known as COP28, was held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in Dubai.

02/27/2022

This is an excellent interview and analysis. Intelligentsia International experienced the entire 90s with the former Soviet Union first hand in its feeble attempts to avoid the current destructive set of circumstances. Our original name was The American-Soviet Cooperative Exchange. What is often overlooked in explaining how we found ourselves at this point, again, is the fact that Russia emerged from the Soviet era immediately stocked with a mafia who were mostly reincarnated KGB and other agency types plus some basic street thugs. There also was a healthy number of truly moral, wise people in the mix. The more ruthless among this collection were poised to feed upon the carcass of the USSR, crush or coopt the moral reformers, and then pick up the pieces to create their own kleptocracy. The USA, in interacting with this new crop of "leaders" sent over a very few clueless bureaucrats and a larger numbers of equally greedy Americans to work with their Russian counterparts. The actual talent we did send over in scale was focused on avoiding nukes ending up where we would rather they not. The mostly second-rate agents of aid and reform were dominated by the same Americans who gave us Afghanistan and Iraq, created the 2008 economic crash and those who have for decades enthusiastically continued with an economic model that they knew was creating an ecological and climate catastrophe. So is it any wonder that here we are again, spending trillions on conflicts which are really just contests to determine which nations get to hold the gun that human civilization seems intent upon shooting itself in the head with. Just as the good people in the USA have been consistently losing to the ignorant, greedy, and evil of our nation, so has been going Russia…and far too many other nations. The people of Ukraine are paying the price at this moment as have the people of so many other nations in recent years and decades. God help them! And regarding the closing point about the eventual outcome of the West, Russia and China dynamic, this was the logical consensus as early as 1970. There have been no miscalculations thus far to interrupt that default flow of history which has been dictated by population and consumption.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the West had an historic opportunity to form a close and friendly relationship with Russia. As Russian tanks roll int...

07/20/2020

Former Intelligentsia interns go on to interesting, meaningful careers in a wide range of organizations and pursuits. Send us your professional links and videos with us so we can share these with others.

Part of the UN Environment/OCHA Joint Unit's 25 years 25 voices anniversary campaign.

04/25/2020

Vice President Rock Aboujaoude Jr. delivers remarks on what the youth can do for the climate, and the need to restructure the economy with a carbon negative approach.

Special thanks to Samuel Saum for filming and editing.

03/26/2019

Meeting at FGCU about a new project, Fort Myers, February 2, 2019
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Newly arrived student Bertrand from Grenoble, France met with FGCU professor Dr. Serge Thomas (also originally from France). Bertrand is beginning his environmental instrumentation project with Dr. Capece to develop a drone monitoring system for turbidity to serve as a continuous online indicator of beach water quality from the tourism perspective.

12/21/2018

Attending the Conference of Youth (COY14), Katowice (Poland), November 29 - December 1, 2018
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Intelligentsia International Inc. represented by its director Michal Fidler and Campus Climate Corps represented by undergrad student Rock Aboujaoude attended the Conference of Youth (COY14) in Katowice. This student's organized conference precedes the UN's climate change conference COP24. We presented a "virtual poster session", in which US students delivered live, interactive poster presentations to COY14-Katowice attendees, reducing GHG gas emissions by 95% compared to overseas flights for the US poster authors. Given that the closing ceremony was attended by P.Espinosa (Executive Secretary of UNFCCC), M.F.Espinosa (President of the UN General Assembly) and M.Kurtyka (COP24 President), it is obvious that importance of this conference increases every year. So, time to start getting ready for COY15 in Chile!

12/21/2018

Presenting a poster at FGCU, Fort Myers, November 30, 2018
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Manuel completed his internship course requirement and in order to wrap the program, he presented a poster at FGCU tonight. Name of the presented poster was "Kissimmee River Basin Waterkeeper Program Design and Planning" and for the geographical planning was mostly used ArcGIS and Google Earth. Manuel did a good job and should be proud of his accomplishments.