ND state deputy and shining example to all
Professor Eleftheria Bernidaki-Aldous was a shining example on the New Democracy’s list of state deputies in 2004. It was not the usual arrangement, where a person who has contributed to the party is elected to a safe seat. Bernidaki-Aldous is a professor who has taught Classics and Ancient History at American universities – Johns Hopkins, Oberlin College and Creighton. Her personal life is an inspiration. Though blinded in an accident at the age of 3, she earned excellent results in her studies, won scholarships, degrees and a doctorate, married, had three children and is active on disability issues. This marvelous woman, who faces life with optimism, is president of the joint party parliamentary committee on the problems of people with disabilities. This month Bernidaki-Aldous was invited to speak at the American University Law School in Washington on the treatment of the disabled in antiquity. She also gave a lecture to Greek Americans at the American-Hellenic Institute, founded in 1974, on «The Exchange of Ideas between Greece and the United States.» Bernidaki-Aldous’s doctoral dissertation, which she completed on a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation, was published under the title «Blindness in a Culture of Light: The Case of Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles,» which was published by the academic publisher Peter Lang and met with international acclaim.
