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Remarks at the Annual Conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators

Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs Patricia de Stacy Harrison
San Antonio, Texas
May 29, 2002

Thank you Marlene for that introduction and thank you for your leadership.

I have just returned from Tokyo—and right now it is past midnight—so I will begin by saying: Governor Celeste, Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening.

The events in Tokyo were focused on the 50th anniversary of the Fulbright program in Japan. A celebration that included not only their Imperial Highnesses, the Emperor and Empress, but the Crown Prince and Princess as well—to honor and support 50 years of effective educational and cultural exchange.

It was especially important for me to be there to bring words of congratulations from both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell, affirming the value of international educational exchange as a proven tool to increase mutual understanding and respect among people throughout the world.

The fact is, from Tokyo to San Antonio, men and women leaders from business, industry and government, are coming together to affirm the significant role international education has played and must play in a future forever changed by the events of September 11.

That is one reason why I wanted to be here to speak with all of you, the membership of NAFSA—a 40-year partner of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. I am so pleased that we have so many program directors from ECA here with us today.

Shortly after Secretary of State Powell swore me in as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, one of the first appointments I had was with the CEO and Executive Director of NAFSA, Marlene Johnson, so that we could begin to invest together in a sustainable way in those programs that will have a positive impact on the next 40 years.

Since September 11, one question I hear often is: Why should the United States encourage students from other countries to come here to study?

I think this is a valid question because it can give each of us an opportunity to respond in a thoughtful way. An opportunity for us to define the true face of exchange, rather than having it defined for us. And, as you know, there are many ways to respond to this question.

We can say that we want international students to come to this country because they bring value to the campus; to our own students and to society by expanding the horizons of those they meet. This is all true. But if we want the questioner to have a real sense of who is coming to the U.S., we may want to connect the dots in a deeper way.

We may want to reference the fact that the interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, came to this country as a young man and left with a deeper knowledge of the American people and our values. A personal experience, for example, of how the media works in a free society. A personal experience of true religious freedom.

We may want to talk about Vincente Fox, the president of Mexico who has a degree from the U.S. And in this regard, we can point to 46 current and 165 former heads of government and chiefs of state-50 percent of the leadership of the President's coalition against terrorism-who either studied in this country or came here as International Visitors.

People such as the late Anwar Sadat, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, Margaret Thatcher-and so many others.

Most people do not know that international educational and cultural exchange has produced prime ministers and poets, scientists and senators, journalists and jurists, entrepreneurs and educators. There are thousands of people in our country and throughout the world, shaping opinions and building bridges of awareness and cooperation.

Many people do not know that among them are 28 Nobel Prize honorees. One of whom, Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, was an international student at Macalester College. He said, " The focus which I found there, has never failed me. Perhaps it was that experience that set me on the road to where I am now."

These are the headline names. But there are literally hundreds of thousands of other men and women, less well known, who can and do talk with authority and integrity about America because they studied in the United States.

They are our unofficial Ambassadors and they serve as public servants, as community and business leaders, as heads of nonprofit organizations. They are scholars and writers. They are parents. Each of them making a difference in their own countries, every single day.

Last year, the Department of State sponsored more than 35,000 exchanges and someone figured out that when these alumni return home, their impact is felt among more than seven million people. Now that's a multiplier effect.

Secretary Powell said, "As we work together to end the scourge of terrorism, let us also work in partnership to create peace, prosperity and democracy." That is exactly what international education promotes.

So to those who question the efficacy of exchange, I tell them how it truly strengthens and promotes the security of the United States in a long-term sustainable way. An investment in international education is an investment in homeland security. Everyone's homeland…and everyone's security.

This means we need to reach out more, not less. We need to increase the numbers of young people from other countries who can have an opportunity to study here and increase the numbers of Americans who will have the chance to know other cultures.

People like Ricardo Ortega, a Fulbrighter at the University of Texas at Austin, who wrote that his months in Texas have been the most productive of his life. He said, "In these short months, my horizons have opened incredibly. I have been steeped in many cultures and it is incredible to me that outside of Latin America, I have come to discover the immensity of Borges and Botero."

We take our diversity, the myriad of cultures represented in our country, for granted. But those experiencing America for the first time leave with a real sense of what it means to be an American. A sense that America does not belong to one race, one religion, one economic group. They leave with a sense of our incredible volunteer ethic. A sense that we are a faith based nation of many faiths. And they leave us with a sense of their culture, their dreams, which are not so very different from our own.

As we meet here in San Antonio, Texas, it is interesting to note that during the academic year 2000-2001, there were approximately 38,000 international students studying in Texas schools, with an economic impact of 615 million dollars annually to the state of Texas.

There are teachers from Texas exchanged with teachers from other countries; trilateral partnerships on sustainable development and wetlands conservation between the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Guelph, Canada and the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. We have partnerships on business between Texas A&M and Turkmen State University in Turkmenistan.

Overall, beyond Texas, international students contribute over 11 billion dollars annually to the U.S. economy.

I was surprised to find that most people who question exchange do not know very much about it and when there is a lack of knowledge, misconceptions replace the facts. We have much work to do, reaching out to non-traditional publics so that they may better understand the true face of exchange and its proven potential.

NAFSA and ECA, working together, through education, can and must secure a peaceful and productive future for the successor generation.

I am hopeful we can do this because I see the work you do each and every day.

Whether it is through the Overseas Educational Advisors promoting U.S. education abroad, or the Fulbright Executive Directors, or Regional Educational Advising Coordinators, each of you is working to ensure that the successor generation has the tools needed to succeed.

You have reached people like Nina Naami who came into the Educational Advising Center in Accra, Ghana with little hope and a very big dream. Nina is disabled and she has no financial resources. Her dream? To obtain a master's degree in social work and community development. The challenge for her was that she was among 40 applicants for the Ford Foundation's International Fellows Program.

The Advising Center's staff worked with Nina and helped her prepare for her interview. They encouraged her by letting her know that the program's priority is to reach students who would not otherwise have an opportunity to go to graduate school.

Nina was accepted into the program and believes that the EducationUSA logo is the best there is.

There are so many stories.

A former Humphrey Fellow from China who spent a year at Emory University is about to publish the first Chinese language-training manual on AIDS to be distributed free to health professionals throughout China;

A former Fulbrighter in West Africa founded GeekCorps, a nonprofit organization sending high tech volunteers to West Africa to help entrepreneurs bridge the digital divide and start their own businesses;

Professors from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale are collaborating with universities in Pakistan and Bangladesh to develop women's studies departments.

I spoke to a young Fulbrighter from China who said, "We want Americans to know more about us -- about our culture". My response was, "Americans want to know more about you and we want you to know more about us-the true spirit and values of our country-so we can both move beyond the stereotypes."

NAFSA is helping to do this. I want to say thank you to all the study abroad advisors who helped us launch the Benjamin Gilman Educational Scholarship program so quickly last summer and who have made the first year so successful.

This scholarship helps bright students who could not afford to study abroad. Betty Likens from Howard University said, "Given that minority students and those from low income families have not in great numbers considered study abroad as an essential component of their educational experience, the Gilman Scholarship provides this opportunity."

I also want to thank NAFSA for working so effectively and swiftly with ECA following September 11, as ECA developed Quick Start programs focusing on Muslim populated countries-including funding to NAFSA for special cooperative grants encouraging interaction between U.S. students and students from predominantly Muslim countries.

And grants for country culture workshops that will help those of you who work with Muslim students and programs on your campuses.

Members of NAFSA are on the front line communicating to the world that the United States is a welcoming place to pursue higher education.

To affirm this, in a recent cable to all diplomatic posts, we provided wording to be used by ambassadors, public affairs officers, and others to affirm that our doors are open to international students.

We are sending newspaper articles and updates to our overseas network of regional educational advising coordinators and to members of NAFSA - to help guide students who have questions about study in the U.S.

Last February, in Malawi, hundreds of prospective students came to hear Dr. Paul Huntsberger, New Mexico State University, and the cultural affairs section on Fulbright and Humphrey programs and the consular section on student visas. In addition, there were information displays from over 75 colleges and universities.

The consensus was that we need to do more of these programs to underscore the message: the U.S. remains engaged in the world and our doors are open to qualified foreign students.

In March of this year, I was in Marrakech, Morocco, at a policy makers summit on higher education in the Arab world.

This conference comprised leaders from business, industry, government, education-men and women-to talk about the future of young people in the region.

In the Muslim world, the population of Islamic youth under the age of 15 is very high.

Their future right now? Chronic unemployment and under employment combined with a lack of adequate education.

Queen Raina of Jordan opened the conference and spoke of the "hope gap", a gap that separates the world's peoples from the earliest age into those who have a future and those who do not.

The central theme of the conference: Every nation, every society, every faith, seeks a better life for its young people.

President Bush stated this in both national and international terms when he said, "Our aim should be to leave no child behind."

He also said, "The relationships that are formed between individuals from different countries as part of international programs and exchanges, foster good will that develops into vibrant, mutually beneficial partnerships among nations."

And our First Lady, Laura Bush, who has demonstrated a life long commitment to children and their education said, "The most important gift we can give the world's children is the gift most likely to lead to future peace and prosperity-and that is the gift of a good education."

So, in concert with this theme and in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced a new exchange initiative at the summit in Morocco that we are calling: Partnerships for Learning.

Partnerships For Learning will be officially launched during international education week in the fall and will provide a framework for dialogue between the U.S. and the countries represented in Morocco, to address the "hope gap" and what we can do about it now.

We will be discussing issues such as curriculum design, teacher training, from institutional development to educational partnerships-and we will be looking for ways to reach younger, wider and deeper.

Younger—so that undergraduate students and high school students can have the opportunity to experience another culture;

Deeper—so that America's international engagement is not limited to traditional elites;

Wider—so that our traditionally successful exchange programs reach new countries and cultures, reach more sectors of society and delve into areas and themes that have only had narrow coverage in the past.

Let me conclude by saying that no one believes more passionately in international education and exchanges than the people in the Department of State. But you and I know that the benefits and successes of international education and exchanges are not fully realized in a week, a semester or a year.

This must be a long-term commitment, a long-term investment and the return is guaranteed. Not many investments can make that claim.

So, the next time you are asked why we should be encouraging students from other countries to study here you may want to reference Mohammad al Kuhleel, a Fulbright student who came to the United States from Syria to study at the University of Arizona.

He said, "People who come to the United States to study, like myself, are the link between the United States and our people. And in the end, educational exchange is the ultimate solution to global terrorism."

The ultimate solution to global terrorism…I can't think of a better answer.

Thank you for all you do and all we are going to do together for our country and for young people everywhere.

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