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International Education MattersA
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NEWS: Senate Panel Focuses on Public Diplomacy and Islam; Voices Support for Exchanges February 27, 2003 Calling exchanges “critically important”, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) today called for increasing exchange efforts and boosting the number of international students who come to the U.S. “The missing ingredient in American public diplomacy between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the September 11 attacks…was a firm commitment by the American people and the American leadership to all the painstaking work required to build lasting relationships overseas and advance our vision of fairness and opportunity. The experience of September 11 jarred us out of our complacency, but this Committee is anxious to ensure that the best public diplomacy strategy is being developed,” Lugar said at a Senate hearing this morning. Ranking committee Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), criticized the Bush Administration’s budget request. “…The request for international exchange programs which are essential to exposing thousands of people to the United States and U.S. citizens is reduced in the President’s budget for Fiscal Year 2004….This will result in real reductions nearly 2,500 fewer participants in exchanges next year….As our diplomatic efforts on Iraq have made plain, we cannot take any allies old or new for granted. We must constantly engage them. We should expand our international broadcasting and international exchanges, not contract them. They are valuable tools to tell America’s story to the world.” Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) echoed Biden’s remarks in his own introductory statement for the record. “Perhaps the most important form of American power projected over the last century has been the power of our ideas and values. If we lose our capacity to lead in that sense, then all of us sitting here, all of us in government, will have presided over the greatest loss of power in American history, regardless of how much we spend on our mighty and admirable military forces. And we will have put ourselves at a great disadvantage likely a decisive and crippling disadvantage in the fight against terrorism,” Feingold said. Witnesses at the hearing included Amb. Kenton Keith, chair of the Alliance board of directors, and Charlotte Beers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Alliance Calls for $100 Million for Islamic Exchanges and a Balanced Visa Policy. In his testimony, Keith called for $100 million above the current appropriation for State exchanges to fund an Islamic exchange initiative. Keith encouraged Lugar to reintroduce the Cultural Bridges Act, which the chairman cosponsored in the last Congress with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and 12 Senate cosponsors. “This amount of money spent on promoting our ideas and values is very small when compared to the sums we will expend on military hardware, but it is no less crucial to our success,” Keith stated. On visas, Keith reported on the growing concern at University of Kansas, where he serves on an advisory board for international programs, that the best foreign students, scholars and researchers are beginning to look elsewhere for higher education, as they regard the U.S. as inhospitable to them. Keith stressed that without a balanced visa policy, “our nation will be squandering one of its most valuable foreign policy assets the opportunity to educate the next generation of world leaders.” Beers’ statement reflected the importance of exchanges: “Among the lessons of 9/11 is that our educational and cultural exchanges be they of young leaders, academics, students, or others are almost always positive, literally transforming, experiences. ….It is impossible to calculate the return on this investment. It would be too high to be believable. Fifty per cent of the leaders of the global coalition in the war against terrorism had been International Visitors. More than 200 current and former Heads of State, 1,500 cabinet-level ministers, and many other distinguished leaders in government and the private sector from around the world have participated in the International Visitor program.” “There’s also a problem,” Beers continued. “The number of exchanges 35,000 a year worldwide is nowhere near enough and should be expanded in the future, since they are so productive. The transformation of perceptions and the recognition of commonality that we realized after 9/11 are so important must take place for millions, not just thousands. We have to go beyond the significant dialogue we have with government officials and country leaders and reach out to mass audiences,” Beers said. She noted that the Administration’s FY04 budget request is “basically straight lined.” Beers called English teaching programs “a secret weapon,”noting that regardless of attitudes toward the United States, virtually every nation is eager for its citizens to become more proficient in English. She noted in particular that English is a gateway to advancement in scientific and technical fields. In response to an inquiry from Feingold, Beers explained State’s new “Secure Borders/Open Doors” program, being developed to harness resources of several government agencies to “speak with one voice” on visas. The program attempts to give clear, comprehensive, and reliable information about the visa process, including links to official websites and stories from students and visitors who have gone through the process. Copyright
2003
Used with permission of the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange. This file was updated on November 8, 2003 |
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