Society Activities

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, April 4th, 2020, the Holland Society of New York held its 134th Annual Meeting. Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, the meeting was conducted via Zoom on the internet. The meeting was well attended with approximately seventy-five Members and Trustees linking in. President Andrew Terhune called the meeting to order at 4:05 p.m. Society Domine Rev. Paul D. Lent opened the meeting with an invocation. President Terhune followed with a motion to waive the reading of last year’s minutes. He then gave a brief address recounting the events that had occurred during his past year as Society President. Secretary James J. Middaugh reported that since the last Annual Meeting, nineteen new Members had joined the Society. Reminiscences about the departed Members were shared after the reading of the necrology, followed by Reverend Lent reading the poem “Gone from My Sight.”

The main portion of the meeting was the election of the President and Trustees for the coming year. Laurie Bogart Wiles, Nominating Committee Member, gave a few brief remarks on new Trustees to be elected. President Terhune asked Dean Vanderwarker to act as election chair. Mr. Vanderwarker read the slate and announced the number of proxies received in favor and number against. The slate of the President and Trustees as presented was approved. The Society duly elected Col. Adrian T. Bogart III as President, Richard Van Deusen as Vice President, David Conklin as Treasurer, and James J. Middaugh as Secretary. New Trustees elected at the meeting were Sally Quackenbush Mason, Thomas Bogart, and Andrew Terhune. David Conklin said a few words regarding a proposed change clarifying the language of the Society’s bylaws relating to the Endowment Fund being voted on by Members. Dean Vanderwarker announced the number of proxies received in favor and number against, and that the bylaw change amendment was approved. President Terhune said a few words regarding two of our outgoing Trustees, Kip Durling and Dean Vanderwarker. President Terhune announced that the presentation of the President’s medal to

incoming President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III has been re-scheduled for this coming October 2020 due to the COVID-19 stay-athome orders. President Terhune adjourned the Annual Meeting.

DUE TO THE social distancing policies as a result of COVID-19, Edward N. Tiesenga, a legal scholar of Dutch descent, gave a multimedia presentation Holland Society Lecture via Zoom on Friday, May15th, at 4 p.m. In a lecture-format titled “Piracy and Punishment: An Appreciation of Hugo Grotius with Special Recognition to Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, Barack Obama, and Preet Bharara,” Tiesenga traced the foundations of modern international law relating to piracy to seventeenthcentury Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius and the contest between Holland and Portugal for

the maritime trade of the Far East. In Mare Liberum (1609), Tiesenga said, Grotius grounded his arguments on the Book of Genesis as being a common resource for all humanity. Tiesenga quotes Grotius’s statement “All peoples or their princes in common can punish pirates, who commit delicts on the sea against the law of nations.” He also noted the foundations of Grotius’s Law of Nations are incorporated into the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, and federal criminal law.

Tiesanga concluded his discussion with the 2009 pirate attack on the U. S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, portrayed in the 2013 drama-thriller film Captain Phillips, and the government’s prosecution of the lone surviving pirate, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, in New York federal court. Hence the subtitle of his talk. In the government’s indictment of Muse, Tiesenga noted how President Barack Obama and the federal prosecutor, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, used the Dutch jurist Grotius’s 400-year-old work to justify the 2009 suppression of Somali piracy. Drawing on the diverse cultural backgrounds of these three principals involved in the Muse case, Tiesenga illuminated how Grotius’s work “transcends ethnic identity and historical circumstance to become a universal doctrine of international law.” A lively question-and-answer period followed the presentation. The presentaion is available to see on the Holland Society of New York webpage http://www.hollandsociety.org/.