Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words When Migrants Wanted To Be Americans | Victor Davis Hanson & Max Nikias
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Mar 13, 2026 Max Nikias, former USC president who rose from a poor Cypriot village to U.S. citizenship and academic leadership. He recalls studying engineering during Greece’s dictatorship and the 1974 Cyprus invasion that displaced his family. He describes arriving in America with little money, navigating H-1B and citizenship paths, building an engineering and university career, and transforming a major campus through fundraising and safety efforts.
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Small Village Origins And Polytechnic Uprising
- Max Nikias grew up in a small Cypriot village with no electricity for his first decade and later moved to Famagusta where his father worked as a carpenter during Cyprus's 1960s construction boom.
- He described experiencing Greece's 1973 Polytechnic student uprising while studying engineering in Athens, placing him at multiple historical turning points before emigrating to the U.S.
Cyprus Invasion And Family Displacement
- In 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus, occupying about 40% of the island and forcing one-third of Greek Cypriots, including Nikias's family, to flee south as refugees.
- Nikias emphasizes his family became displaced and later avoided using the label "refugee," determined to succeed independently after emigrating.
Citizenship As Final Integration
- Becoming an American citizen was a deliberate goal and felt like a "second homecoming" to Nikias; he and his wife studied intensively for the citizenship test and timed naturalization as a milestone of belonging.
- They arrived with $1,500, used a SUNY Buffalo scholarship to launch careers, and celebrated citizenship exactly ten years after arrival as definitive integration.
