Laszlo Bito, right, organized a reunion of Hungarians who spent eight weeks at Bard College half a century ago after fleeing their country during the revolt against the Soviet Union.

Published: February 21, 2007

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.

They were refugees of a failed uprising, most of them arriving penniless and alone, baffled by the language, knowing that returning home could mean jail or death.
But for eight weeks in the winter of 1956-57, roughly 300 Hungarians fleeing the Soviet tanks that crushed their startling revolt found a life raft in a small college 90 miles north of New York City.
Even if they could scarcely stop chatting in Hungarian, they learned enough English to manage the road ahead. Young men and women who served time in labor camps for being “class enemies” learned some of the peculiarities of a new country where police need not always be feared or bribed. They learned of scholarships that vaulted them to schools like Princeton and M.I.T. And, it’s worth noting, two refugees married each other.
Those eight weeks at Bard College so many years ago generated dividends that the United States is still collecting. Out of that passel of adrift newcomers emerged doctors, engineers, and scientists, including two leaders in the treatment of eye disease, Laszlo Bito and Frank Holly; a third, Sandor Holly, who developed an early laser; and a fourth, Charles Legendy, whose theories contributed to plasma generation used in making computer chips.
Over the weekend, when 30 of these onetime rebels got together here for a 50th anniversary reunion, bear-hugging onetime classmates, visiting dormitories where they had roomed, reminiscing about that strange interlude with a tart Mitteleuropean humor, there was also talk of some lessons that the United States needs to remind itself of in a post-9/11 world.
At a time when too many immigrant scholars are greeted with suspicion and often discouraged, the former refugees found it worth remembering that opening America’s unmatched university classrooms harnesses the zeal and quicksilver intelligence of the world’s best minds, and that a proper balance with security must be struck. “One reason we organized this is to show that not all immigrants are a burden to the United States and not all immigrants are to be feared,” said Mr. Bito.
After declining for several years, the numbers of foreign students enrolled in higher education last year rebounded to 565,000, the levels of the 2001-2 school year. America, it seems, is more dependent than ever on immigrants for its scientific skills. With Wall Street exerting an ever greater pull, one of every four doctors is foreign-born and half of all patents are issued to foreigners, according to Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education.
Still there are repeated cases of professors and students who are humiliated or deterred by the visa gantlet. True, the United States happily gave more than 30,000 Hungarians sanctuary because they viewed them as freedom fighters in the same anti-Communist cause that was consuming this nation at the time. Today, many of the scholars and students challenged are from Middle Eastern countries, and some college officials question whether all are genuine security threats.
Leon Botstein, Bard’s president and the son of Nazi-era refugees, told how a lengthy visa processing prevented his school from gaining entry this semester for Youssef Yacoubi, a scholar in Arabic literature and British citizen of Moroccan descent, even though he taught at Bard in the fall.
Joanne Moore, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said, “We generally don’t talk about individual cases because of the issue of privacy.”
Mr. Botstein argued that rather than seeking to keep people out, the nation can use colleges to nurture habits of academic freedom, open argument and unbridled research that students can take back to their closed countries.
“This reunion is a reminder of how important it is for the American university to be responsive and open to students coming from abroad and seeking asylum,” he said.
Americans are obviously ambivalent. Last year the Bush administration pledged to continue reducing visa restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11 attacks, in response to complaints from universities about the first drop in the number of foreign students in the United States in more than three decades.
These days, in sharp contrast with cases where bureaucrats seem ready to bar the door, stand programs like one run by the Institute of International Education, with financing by the State Department, which provides fellowships for eight Iranians to study here while teaching Farsi. “When they go back to Iran they will have an image of Americans which is totally different than what Iranians are getting on their television,” said Margot Steinberg, the institute’s chief development officer.