Special Chronicle feature includes opinion article by NAFSA CEO Marlene M. Johnson

Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated September 12, 2008

MARLENE M. JOHNSON, executive director and chief executive of Nafsa: Association of International Educators:

The next president will face daunting foreign policy and national-security challenges. One of the most fundamental will be to restore America's international legitimacy. Both candidates recognize that need, and to address it, both have pledged to do a better job of public diplomacy. Reflecting the widespread preoccupation with that issue, an important conversation is taking place among concerned citizens to determine the appropriate public-diplomacy infrastructure to recommend to the next administration. There have been numerous proposals for reorganizing the public-diplomacy function within or outside the U.S. government.

Reengineering the next public-diplomacy agency, however, is not the only challenge, nor even the most fundamental one. Public diplomacy is essentially about understanding — America's understanding of the world, and the world's understanding of America. The United States cannot conduct effective public diplomacy with a world that it does not know, listen to, or understand. And the world cannot understand America unless we do a better job of nurturing the ties through which the world knows us.

For those reasons, education is not peripheral to public diplomacy, but rather at its core. It is impossible to conduct effective public diplomacy without accomplishing two things that universities are uniquely positioned to do: first, to ensure that students graduate with basic knowledge and understanding of the world and an ability to communicate in the world's languages; and, second, to attract international students and scholars to be educated in the United States and to experience and develop lifelong relationships with America.

The next president should announce a major international education project designed explicitly to foster an America that knows, understands, and is able to communicate with the world, and to strengthen the relationships through which the American people and the world's people can relate to, interact with, and understand each other. Such a project should include two higher-education components: a national program to establish study abroad as an integral part of American undergraduate education, and the restoration of America's status as a magnet for international students and scholars.

America must graduate far more students from college with basic international knowledge and proficiency in a foreign language. To make that happen, the next president should put his administration squarely behind the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, which would quadruple study-abroad participation and diversify study-abroad opportunities in terms of participants, fields of study, and destinations. The president should make it a priority to carry out and including funding for that bill if Congress enacts it this year, and to reintroduce it if Congress does not.

The next president should also announce a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the attractiveness of our nation to international students and scholars. That will require creating a capability in the White House to provide strong policy guidance and coordinate federal actions with respect to international students and scholars. It will also require revising immigration law and visa policy to make it easier for legitimate visitors to enter the country while maintaining necessary vigilance to identify illegitimate visitors. Such a broad, national effort would immediately send a strong signal to the world that the United States is committed to strengthening international understanding.

Source: http://www.nafsa.org/press_releases.sec/press_releases.pg/presrecsoped