U.S. suspends all nonimmigrant visa operations in Russia on August 23 due to Russian government cap on U.S. diplomatic personnel

More via the U.S. Mission to Russia at https://ru.usembassy.gov/u-s-mission-russia-statement/

Recent Focus of International Education in Russia

I found the following two news clips from RT on the growing focus on international education in Russia to be very interesting and I thought I would embed them here on IHEC Blog for readers to view.

Video of the Week – Introduction to the Open World Program

Heard of the Open World Program before? I’ve been aware of their existence for only a few months and I’ve been following them on Twitter and really like what they are about.

After watching the video I recommend checking out their website to learn more about them and if you are on Twitter follow them at http://twitter.com/OWProgram.

U.S. Educational/Cultural Exchanges with Russia/Soviet Union

Over the weekend I received a Google Alert for “international education” that I not only found to be quite interesting but also very timely in my research efforts. The short news piece that I’m referring to entitled “United States-Russian Exchanges Boost Mutual Understanding” was published by ISRIA (a consulting an information publishing service founded in Paris in 2004). The news piece is of interest to me as it relates to international education and, in particular, the public diplomacy aspect of international educational exchanges. The reason that this news piece is so timely for my research is that I just checked out several related books from the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago last Friday (the day before the ISRIA piece). The books I checked out are as follows:

U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986: Who Wins? by Yale Richmond (1987)

Cultural Exchange & the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain by Yale Richmond (2003)

Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey by Yale Richmond (2008)

Private Diplomacy with the Soviet Union edited by David D. Newsome (1987)

Cultural Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy by Charles A. Thomson & Walter H.C. Laves (1963)

Cultural Affairs and Foreign Relations edited by Robert Blum (1963)

I checked out all of these books as they focus entirely or in part on the use of educational/cultural exchange by the United States during the Cold War period and in particular with the Soviet Union. Hopefully these books will help me focus my dissertation topic/proposal…

The ISRIA piece offers a brief overview of the current state of U.S.-Russian educational/cultural exchanges which I admittedly have not been following in depth.

EDIT ~ Apparently the ISRIA link isn't working (most likely because you need to be a subscriber despite me being able to access it earlier this week). I believe that I found the same article on America.gov which you can access here.

Cultural Exchange and Understanding as a Result of Some Russian Bells

Luis Campos is an Assistant Professor of History at Drew University specializing in the History of Science. He’s also an expert on the 18 Russian bells that once hung in Lowell House Bell Tower on Harvard University’s campus and are now back home at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. He’s also my brother-in-law and he has the honor of being the first member of my family to get a mention in an IHEC Blog post!

This blog post is not about his scholarship in the History of Science nor about his research and writings on the history of these bells (although I think he’s writing a book about the bells and I’ll be sure to post about that once it’s published so stay tuned). You can read an article on Luis’ research on the bells here.

The Christian Science Monitor has a short narrated photo presentation on the bells return to Russia and it was a statement from a representative of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow that caught my attention and prompted me to post about the bells. Through a translator, a member of the Danilov Monastery stated:

“We’ve been anticipating for a long, long time in our monastery and it became possible and also it enriched our relationship in terms of our cultural exchange and cultural understanding.”

You can link to the Christian Science Monitor article here.

P.S. I can neither confirm nor deny a private and up close tour of the bells up in the Lowell House Bell Tower in spring of 1997…

Secretary Clinton's Reset Button Gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

I’ve been a fan of the AFS Intercultural Eyes blog for some time now and found Bettina Hansel’s[1] March 10th post on the cultural miscommunication between U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to be quite interesting. You can access Bettina’s post here.

[1] Bettina Hansel is AFS’s Director of Intercultural Education and Research and she created and maintains the AFS Intercultural Eyes blog.