Victor Davis Hanson interviews former USC president and engineer Max Nikias about his memoir, American Trojan, tracing Nikias’s journey from a poor village in Cyprus to U.S. citizenship and academic leadership. Nikias recounts studying engineering in Athens during Greece’s military dictatorship and witnessing the 1973 Polytechnic uprising, then returning home as Cyprus was invaded by Turkey in 1974, displacing his family. He describes arriving in America with $1,500, earning a SUNY Buffalo scholarship, navigating H-1B and citizenship standards, and building a career in engineering and classified U.S. Navy work.
