Levitte delivered The Pennington School’s 2006 Stephen Crane Lecture March 30
By John Tredrea
As you would expect of a professional diplomat, Jean-David Levitte is an affable, relaxed man who smiles often.
But the intensity of his smile increased a few noticeable degrees when he was asked, moments before addressing a packed gymnasium at The Pennington School, what he thought of America.
"I’m in love with America!" he declared. "There’s always been a love affair between our two countries."
On March 30, Mr. Levitte, who has been based in the United States for five years, delivered The Pennington School’s 2006 Stephen Crane Lecture in the Sparks Memorial Gymnasium.
Mr. Crane, the author of the classic Civil War novel "The Red Badge of Courage" and other works, attended The Pennington School from 1855 to 1857. His father, John Crane, was a headmaster at the school.
The topic of Ambassador Levitte’s lecture was "The United States and France in a World Transformed."
Having presented his credentials as ambassador to President George W. Bush in December 2002, Mr. Levitte, 60, has been in the French foreign service for 36 years, holding various senior positions and serving on the staff of two French presidents. Prior to assuming his current post, he had been French permanent representative to the United Nations since 2000. While in New York, he handled several international negotiations, including Resolution 1441 on Iraq.
A native of southern France, Mr. Levitte earned a law degree and is a graduate of Sciences-Po (the Paris Institute for Political Studies) and of the National School of Oriental Languages, where he studied Chinese and Indonesian. His first diplomatic posts, in the early 1970s, were in Hong Kong and Beijing.
As he spoke in the gym, a strong current of emotion underscored Mr. Levitte’s composed demeanor as he spoke of the relationship between France and America, which began before our Wwar for Iindependence.
"The friendship between the United States is an old story, full of passion," he said. He noted that, at the Battle of Yorktown during the American Revolution, "there were as many French soldiers as American soldiers" opposing British forces. He added that, the Marquis de Lafayette, the most famous French backer of the American Revolution, "fell in love with America and named his son after George Washington." He said Lafayette actually had enough American soil sent to France to be buried in, which he was under an American flag, in Paris.
"The best deal in American history" was how Mr. Levitte characterized the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.
"That’s not bad," Mr. Levitte said. "Fifteen million dollars for what turned out to be 13 states. Napoleon needed the $15 million for a fleet to invade England (a plan that eventually was called off he attacked to the east of France instead). He also wanted America to be a world-class power on the other side of the Atlantic that would forever be a friend of France."
An irony, Mr. Levitte said, was that Jefferson borrowed the money to pay Napoleon from an English bank. But Bonaparte got what he wanted, and then some, in a friend for France in America, Mr. Levitte said.
"Napoleon was right," he declared. "Americas saved France two times (in the World Wars) in the last century."
Termed "one of the most moving experiences of his life" was Mr. Levitte’s "having the great privilege of being on the Normandy beach on June 6, 2004 the 60th anniversary of D-Day." While there, he met several American combat veterans of that historic attack. "They are the heroes of the greatest American generation," he said feelingly.
"I asked them why they had done what they did for us during World War II. One of them just said: ‘We needed to do it, so we did it.’ And that is exactly what those 18- and 19-year-old infantrymen did. Many of them probably knew little or nothing of France, yet they were ready to die for France and for democracy in Europe. We have not always agreed with America, but one thing we will never forget is that we are living in peace and freedom because of America."
Shortly after his election in 1974, French President Valery Giscard d’Estang asked Mr. Levitte to serve on his staff at the Elysée Palace, a position Mr. Levitte held from 1975 to 1981.
Mr. Levitte then received his first assignment to the United States as second counselor at the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York. He later returned to Paris, where he was appointed deputy assistant secretary in the African Bureau and then assigned as deputy chief of staff to the foreign minister, a position he held from 1986 to 1988.
In 1988, he was designated to his first ambassadorial position and served as the French Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva from 1988 to 1990. Returning to Paris in 1990, he held senior positions in the French Foreign Ministry, first as assistant secretary for Asia and then as undersecretary for cultural and scientific cooperation.
After the presidential elections in 1995, French President Jacques Chirac asked Mr. Levitte to be his senior diplomatic advisor, a position in which he served from 1995 to 2000, at which time President Chirac appointed him as French permanent representative.
The Stephen Crane Lecture series at The Pennington School commenced in 1988, the 150th anniversary year of the school’s founding. Previous lecturers have included environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Apollo 13 flight director Gene Kranz; noted coach Herman Boone; author and musician James McBride; and actors Frank Runyeon, Mike Farrell and Jayne Meadows.

