ABSTRACT
Louvain-la-Neuve is situated thirty kilometers south east of Brussels in the French-speaking southern part of Belgium. During the 1960s amidst Flemish claims that they were being discriminated against and Walloon counterclaims, the University of Louvain divided into the Dutch language Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which remained in Louvain/Leuven, and the Université Catholique de Louvain, which moved south of Belgium’s linguistic border to a site near the town of Ottignies chosen by Michel Woitrin, a professor at the university, after discussion with the mayors of the adjacent towns. The site was a 9 square kilo meter (2,224 acre) plot of predominantly farmland in a somewhat windswept valley that students now refer to as “Little Siberia.”
