He traveled in the Middle East after graduation, worked at the U of C Press for three years, then, after a stint as a U of C grad student in anthropology, moved to Cambridge and took a job at the anthropology library before accepting his current position in 1983. Both men follow international events, and they watched, read, and listened with horror as the war in Bosnia escalated, discussing it on a daily basis. Spurr wrote numerous letters urging U.S. and U.N. intervention to President Clinton, National Public Radio, the French embassy, and other leaders. After the burning of the National and University Library, Riedlmayer encouraged professional organizations to at least speak out, if not offer direct assistance, but got little response. It s an institutional culture that pervades both academic organizations and American culture in general, this false evenhandedness, claims Riedlmayer.
Every dispute is seen as having two sides that can be cut down the middle.
Wanting to convince a larger audience of the gravity of the war in Bosnia, the two joined Harvard historian Cemal Kafadar and MIT researcher Irvin Schick in getting nearly 300 scholars from around the world to sign a letter condemning the systematic destruction of Bosnia s cultural heritage. Accompanied by a photo of the burning library, it ran as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times in March 1993 and in the New York Review of Books four months later. The ad garnered a lot of attention, and Riedlmayer began to be invited to speak and write about cultural property in Bosnia. Following the first of some 70 speeches he s given, York University assistant professor Amila Buturovic sister of the slain Aida Buturovic and a former researcher at Sarajevo s Oriental Institute approached him. The 500 photocopies, microfilm pages, and photographs located so far represent more than two dozen works in whole or in part.