Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Jennifer Cash, a professor in the Center for Russian and East European Studies at Pitt. Name: Jennifer R. Cash Age: 32 Residence: Squirrel Hill Position: Visitor exchange coordinator, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh; managing editor, "East European Politics and Society" Education: Bachelor's degree in anthropology, University of Chicago, 1996; doctorate in anthropology, Indiana University, 2004 Previous positions: Visiting professor, University of Pittsburgh; lecturer, Franklin College, Franklin, Ind., and Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. Publications: Ten articles and reviews in refereed journals, including "Whose House Is Moldova? Hospitality as a Model for Ethnic Relations," Kennan Institute occasional papers The Series Click here to view other installments in this continuing series.

Jennifer Cash is an expert on Moldova.

No, not the mythical kingdom in the 1980s' TV series "Dynasty" -- that was Moldavia -- but the former Soviet republic nestled between Romania and Ukraine in southeastern Europe.

It might be difficult to imagine what the rest of the world can learn from a country of 4.4 million people that is scarcely bigger than Maryland.

But Dr. Cash, a professor in the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, said the lessons Moldova has to offer center on one of its foremost attributes: hospitality.

Despite living in one of the poorest nations in Europe, the inhabitants of Moldova are known for the gracious way they treat guests, Dr. Cash said. If you visit a Moldovan home, she said, "You don't need to schedule in advance; if you show up, you're going to be well taken care of and well fed." If you need housing, it will be provided.

Most Moldovan towns also host annual feast days in honor of their patron saints, at which visitors are especially welcomed.

Yet at the national level, Moldovan politics is colored by the same kind of ethnic tension that afflicts other parts of the world -- how far to push Moldovan, a dialect of Romanian, as the official language; resentment over the continued influence of the Russians who settled in the country during the Soviet era; protests by ethnic minorities such as the Bulgarians and the Gagauz, who are related to the Turks.

The challenge, Dr. Cash said, is how to take the nation's deep traditions of hospitality and translate them into a national ethos.

The same dilemma faces many other nations, she said.

Elsewhere in Europe, the United Kingdom, France and Germany are struggling with how to treat their largely Muslim immigrant populations.

In India, where welcoming guests is an ancient part of the Hindu tradition, tensions between Hindus and Muslims continue to flare up.

And in the United States, where the hospitality of frontier settlers was legendary, and where cities like Pittsburgh pride themselves on how friendly they are to strangers, the recent national debate over Mexican immigrants shows that we, too, have a hard time incorporating those customs into national policy.

Dr. Cash doesn't pretend to have magic answers to these paradoxes, but she joins a long line of thinkers who have argued that a code of gracious behavior between hosts and guests could be the basis for a new, more tolerant social order.

In the New Testament, for instance, the parable of the Good Samaritan is essentially a hospitality story, in which the least likely candidate shows the greatest kindness to an injured stranger.

In modern-day France, award-winning author Tahar ben Jelloun has sounded similar themes in his books, especially "Racism Explained to My Daughter."

"He's pointing out that the French people have this rural tradition of hospitality which is a generous one," Dr. Cash said, "and he says if you leave French citizens and Arabs to their own devices they can treat each other very well. He's suggesting that the problem is the way the state is interfering with that."

In a similar way, Dr. Cash argued in a 2004 paper for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that the kindness that different ethnic groups in Moldova show for each other in their own homes should become the guiding principle of national politics.

The key, she said, would be to develop political policies in which people treat each other as honored guests.

"In everyday life," she wrote, "every adult in Moldova is assumed to be a host or hostess. Some fulfill this role better than others: They are more generous, or have more to give; but no one is expected to permanently take on the role of 'guest.' "

Language in the country is a key ingredient of the contradiction between local hospitality and national dissension.

In Moldova, one way a host tries to reinforce his welcome is by speaking the guest's language. At the same time, a guest can score big points by trying to speak in the host's language, even if he can't do it very well.

Yet many Moldovans, still smarting from the days when Russian was the preferred language for advancement in science and politics, argue that Moldovan should be the dominant language in schools and public life.

It's an argument that echoes the debates over speaking English in America, she said.

In the United States, Dr. Cash said, "we're notorious for saying love it or leave it. We're notorious for demanding that our guests comply with our rules of the house -- speak English, behave like we do, think like we do, and then you can stay, but don't come and then try to maintain your own language."

Ethnic tensions like these can become especially severe when they are tied to economic struggles, she said.

"Certainly what's happening in the states now is that people who in the past would have been easily employed in the industrial society are feeling pressure [about jobs]; so whether their jobs are really being taken by illegal immigrants or not, they're feeling that pressure."

The same competition exists in the regions Dr. Cash has studied, as a recent hair dye shortage in Transylvania showed.

In this region of Romania, there is a mixture of Hungarian and Romanian people, she said, but most of the beauticians are Hungarian. So when hair dye became scarce, Hungarian women "were all walking around with nicely dyed hair," and Romanian women started to go gray.

It may seem like a silly example, she said, but "these are the kinds of issues that build" into broader conflicts.

Even as she searches for practical answers to ethnic conflicts, she continues to believe the hospitality metaphor is a potent one.

"The idea is that people don't have to behave differently in the political realm than they do at home.

Hospitality doesn't mean giving up your own identity.

"Hospitality presumes that strangers and different communities are in contact with each other. It's not something that requires the merging of communities -- but it allows them to live together peacefully."