U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis interview with Teddy Fischer of The Islander (student newspaper of Mercer Island High School) and how International Education was part of the Discussion

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis granted a rare interview with Teddy Fischer of The Islander (student newspaper of Mercer Island High School).  On June 20, 2017, The Islander published the full transcript of the interview and an answer to one particular question caught my attention as it relates to the value and importance of international educational exchange.  I have posted a screen shot of Teddy's question and Secretary Mattis' answer below that I refer to:

It's nice to see another U.S. Secretary of Defense to understand the value of soft power and talk positively about international educational exchange.

Is International Education an Agent of Democratization?

One of the first papers I wrote in my doctoral program in Comparative and Interntional Education was entitled International Education as an Agent of Democratization. I did well on the paper and in the class. It wasn't ground breaking research nor was it spectacular writing but it laid the foundation for my current reseach interests on this topic as well as on soft power, public/citizen/cultural diplomacy which I have blogged about from time to time on IHEC Blog.

For this post I thought I would put forth a short (and purposefully vague) question with the hope that IHEC Blog readers will leave a comment in response

Question: Is international education an agent of democratization?

Update: I've heard from a few people that it would be helpful if I provide a definintion/more information and I'm happy to do that. This IHEC Blog post is guided by Aaron Benavot’s (1999) question “What are the specific mechanisms and processes linking higher education and increasing levels of democracy in the recent period?” Benavot suggests that one research approach should focus on “students studying abroad, particularly those in North American or Western European universities, where foreign students often receive firsthand exposure to democratic institutions and practices.”Reference:

Benavot, A. (1999). Education and political democratization: Cross-national and longitudinal findings. In N.F. McGinn, & E.H. Epstein (Eds.), Comparative Perspectives on the Role of Education in Democratization (pp. 45-79). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang GmbH.

I'd love to hear what you think so please leave a comment. Thanks ~ David

NAFSA and Seventeen Organizations Send President Obama Letter Urging Removal of Restrictions on Academic Travel to Cuba

Today, NAFSA: Association of International Educators and a diverse coalition of seventeen organizations sent a letter to President Obama urging him to remove current restrictions on academic travel to Cuba. Citing the many benefits of academic exchanges and their history of success in advancing democratic change and strengthening relations between the United States and other countries, the letter suggests that a policy of open academic travel between the United States and Cuba would align well with the President’s interest in expanding opportunities for exchanges between young people around the world. The full list of organizations in the coalition can be found in the official release, but NAFSA has teamed up with Orbitz for its Open Cuba campaign – the petition on their website has garnered more than 50,000 signatures.

You can view NAFSA’s press release here or read the letter here. NAFSA also has a summary up on their blog here. Additionally, here’s the White House blog entry from when they announced the easing of restrictions in April.

You can read previous IHEC Blog posts relating to Cuba here.

Eight Former Secretaries of State Call for More Foreign Diplomacy Personnel

I just came across a great article today on Politico.com written by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice entitled “U.S. must deloy [sic] more foreign diplomacy personnel”.

I pulled the following three quotes from their article as I found them to be relevant to the content I post to IHEC Blog:

“sending diplomats abroad without language skills is like deploying soldiers without bullets. Yet nearly 30 percent of positions that require foreign language skills are filled by officers without them. Why? Because State lacks the personnel to send to language training at a time when nearly 20 percent of regular positions in embassies and in the State Department are unfilled. (referring to the American Academy of Diplomacy report Foreign Affairs Budget of the Future)

“Staff levels at USAID declined from 4,300 in 1975 to 2,200 in 2007 — even as other budgets rose. An agency that once built roads now has only five full-time engineers. The 2,200 USAID career officers are fewer than were once in Vietnam alone.”

“As regional and cultural conflicts have grown into issues of worldwide concern, our exchange programs for students and scholars have declined, along with the personnel to manage them.”

You can access the full article here.

Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today

During my research efforts I came across an interesting page on the EducationUSA website entitled Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today that I thought I would share with IHEC Blog readers. Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today lists 342 current or former Heads of State, Ambassadors, Ministers as well as people in other positions of leadership/power in their respective home countries who all studied in the United States.

You can access Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today here. Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today is also available for download in PDF format on the website.

The Foreign Students Yesterday, World Leaders Today list is not to be confused with the list of International Visitor Leadership Program alumni. Currently there are 59 Chiefs of State and Heads of Government who participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program.

You can access the list of International Visitor Leadership Program alumni here.

Does anyone know of any other such lists? If so, please leave a comment with information on where to obtain the list.

There are often strong opinions on the value/meaning of such lists and I encourage discussion on this topic so please leave a comment!

To be an International Student in the U.S. on Inauguration Day

On November 4th my German host brother, from when I was an exchange student in Rosenheim, Germany some twenty years earlier, was visiting me and my family here in Hyde Park, Chicago and he was able to head down to Grant Park to take in the sights and sounds of the celebration for Barack Obama on the night he was elected the 44th President of the United States. He was able to witness the United States in a way he had never imagined he would and certainly different than he would have from watching on television back home in Germany. He felt it was a truly special moment and one that he was thankful he could witness in person.

Barak Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States provided international visitors a similar opportunity. I watched the inauguration on television like most people around the globe. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be in Washington, D.C. to witness that event. Of the millions of people who were fortunate enough to find themselves in Washington, D.C. yesterday many were from abroad and I imagine that many felt the same way about the inaugural celebration as my German host brother felt about the celebration at Grant Park on November 4th. Insidehighered.com published an interesting story today entitled “The Foreign (Student) Perspective on America’s Historic Day” that I think many readers will find of interest. You can access this article here.

Analysis of U.S. Approach to International Education Legislation

I've started preliminary research on my dissertation and I will be focusing on international education and public diplomacy and soft power. I still need to do much more research before I can narrow down my topic and formulate a question. An early observation I've made in this area follows:

Throughout the United States’ history of international education legislation and funding it is clear that soft power is an underlying objective of the federal government. The legislative language and the language used in the related literature during the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s focused more on “mutual understanding between cultures” while the language used during the 1990’s up to today has had a much stronger tone and emphasizes the benefit to U.S. “national security.” An exception to this is the National Defense Education Act of 1958 which encouraged and supported international education exchanges but the focus was more on U.S. national security and competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Next U.S. Ambassador to Japan to be Joseph Nye

Cultural Diplomacy News (CDN) is reporting that President-Elect Obama has appointed Joseph Nye as the new U.S. Ambassador to Japan. News of Nye’s appointment is beginning to hit the international media outlets (primarily in Japan). A slightly more detailed article about Nye’s appointment is available on Yahoo! News here.

Nye who is a leading scholar in international relations theory is widely known for coining the term “Soft Power”. One of my first blog posts was on Joseph Nye’s article on the value of soft power and international education entitled “Squandering the U.S. ‘Soft Power’ Edge” from the January/February 2007 International Educator which you can access here.

NAFSA 2008 Presidential Election Resources

I thought several readers might be interested in the resources NAFSA has compiled and is hosting on its website about the 2008 Presedential Election. For frequent readers of this blog you know that I feature and discuss public diplomacy and soft power from time to time and this web resources provides many great resources in this area. You can access NAFSA's site here: http://www.nafsa.org/public_policy.sec/election08

The Future of Soft Power and International Education

At the upcoming NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference in Washington, D.C. I'll be presenting as part of a panel on the future of soft power and international education with my colleagues Jed Willard and Bryan McAllister-Grande (chair). Following is the abstract of our session:

Soft power allows nations to achieve goals without military force. Explore the history and perceived decline of American soft power and the ethics/tactics of international educator involvement. Participants from all knowledge communities are invited to contribute during the presentation and to ongoing research. Non-U.S. soft power perspectives are especially welcome.

Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) series on Smart Power

Continuing on the topic of Soft/Smart Power that has been an on going
discussion theme on the NAFSA Teaching, Learning & Scholarship Research/Scholarship network (www.nafsa.org/RSnetwork) I am posting a link to a video from a December 3, 2007 panel discussion which is part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) series on Smart Power. This panel consisting of World Learning President and CEO, Carol Bellamy, H. Patrick Swygert, President of Howard University, and Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, President Emeritus of George Washington University discussed the role of international education and the influence it can have on restoring the United States' standing in the world. You can link to the panel discussion here:
http://media.csis.org/csistv/?071203_smartpower.

Related to this issues is the new poll: Americans Concerned About Long-Term Impact of Damaged US Reputation Abroad from the January 28, 2008 PRNewswire-USNewswire:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-28-2008/0004744241&EDATE=

Research on International Education as a Vehicle of U.S. Soft Power, 1945-2000

Recently, I finished some research on international education as a vehicle of soft power in the United States. The first aim of my research was to determine the intended outcome of the international education legislation and funding in the United States between 1945 and 2000.

Throughout the United States’ history of international education legislation and funding it is clear that soft power is an underlying objective of the federal government. The term “cultural exchange” is used frequently throughout the related literature and legislative language. Often times the term “cultural exchange” is used interchangeably with the term “international educational exchanges.” The interchangeability of these two terms, however, was more prevalent in the literature and legislation of the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s. These two terms were used more separately in the 1970’s through the year 2000.

Another finding is, that for the most part, the language used during the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s focused more on “mutual understanding between cultures” while the language used during the 1990’s and into 2000 had a much stronger tone and emphasized the benefit to the “national security” of the United States. An exception to this is the National Defense Education Act of 1958 which encouraged and supported international education exchanges but the focus was more on U.S. national security and competition with the Soviet Union during this challenging period of the Cold War.

Interestingly, the language used in The International Academic Opportunity Act not only focused on the benefit that these study abroad scholarships would give to the United States in terms of soft power and national security but it also focused on the personal benefits that scholarship recipients gain and that the purpose of the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship was to better prepare students to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy. It took until the year 2000 for the federal government to fully understand the economic benefits of international education exchanges and that the economic dimension is just as important to the United States as soft power and national security objectives.

I was also interested in investigating the importance that the international education legislation and literature place on the inflow of international students and scholars into the United States and on the outflow of American students and scholars who are studying and/or conducting research abroad? It’s not surprising that in the years immediately following World War II and into the 1960’s the federal government and the greater higher education community placed significant importance on the inflow of international students and scholars into the United States. Certainly, the federal government saw value in funding and supporting U.S. students and scholars going abroad for academic purposes but their main focus was on the academic inflow into the United States. While support for international education exchanges increased through the last half of the twentieth century, the international education legislative focus of the 1990’s and into 2000 tended to favor the outflow of U.S. students and scholars than on the inflow of academics from abroad. What changed, however, was that major federal legislation focusing on international students and scholars in the United States was found more in the immigration arena.

International Educational Exchange as a Vehicle of Soft Power

Many scholars in the Social Sciences fail to address the role of education in their scholarship and how it connects with their discipline. This is not to say that education has a place in all social science scholarship. In a recent article by Joseph Nye Squandering the U.S. ‘Soft Power’ Edge he highlights the importance international education and cultural contacts played during the Cold War. Nye describes the three ways a nation can achieve power: “by using or threatening force, by inducing compliance with rewards, or by using soft power.” He provides examples from Yale Richmond’s work Cultural Exchange and the Cold War highlighting the significant role that academic exchanges played in enhancing American soft power. One example is that "between 1958 and 1988 fifty thousand Soviets visited the U.S. as writers, journalists, officials, musicians, athletes and academics and an even larger number of Americans went to the Soviet Union during this time period. For example, Aleksandr Yakovlev studied under political scientist David Truman at Columbia University in 1958, became a Politburo member and had much influence on Mikhail Gorbachev. Additionally, Oleg Kalugin who was a high official in the KGB is quoted as saying 'exchanges were a Trojan Horse for the Soviet Union. They played a tremendous role in the erosion of the Soviet system…They kept infecting more and more people over the years.'"[1]

A question I pose for debate is: Why is education so often left out of the discussion on the rise and fall of nations and do you agree or disagree with the importance that Nye and Richmond place on education, in this case academic exchanges, in contributing to the fall of the Soviet Union?

[1] Quotes and description taken from Joseph S. Nye. (2007) Squandering the U.S. ‘Soft Power’ Edge. International Educator, (16) 1, 4-6. Joseph S. Nye is Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University.