Note: The following speech was delivered at a meeting of the American Association of University Administrators held June 21, 2003.

Good afternoon. I appreciate this opportunity to talk with you about a subject that, since Sept. 11, 2001, has moved from the margins to the center of much educational and political debate here in the U.S. Before that horrendous day, only those of us who shared a special interest in international education or who worked directly in the field would have been likely to engage in the kind of intense philosophical and pragmatic discussion that now stretches from university campuses, to think tanks, to the halls of Congress.

But national security fears have changed the landscape radically. Increased scrutiny on those who seek visas to enter the United States has threatened to close our doors to the students who, since the end of World War II, have come to us in increasing numbers from around the world. Even a United States Senator I greatly admire and respect, Dianne Feinstein, initially proposed a six-month moratorium on the issuing of international student visas.

After conversations with higher education representatives, she dropped that idea, but early this year, new regulations established by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service took effect, requiring postsecondary institutions to track and report on all international students and faculty. FBI agents have visited campuses, seeking to interview and gain information about students from "sensitive" areas of the world. We hear stories about international students who have had great difficulty obtaining visas or reentering the U.S. after a home visit. I know of at least two such instances involving students from my own campus.

Like my esteemed colleague, Vice Chancellor Goulter, I am here to make the case for the necessity of maintaining -- and expanding -- international student exchanges. I recognize that we must strengthen national security efforts. But we must also encourage the flow of international students to our campuses. It is reassuring, therefore, to see that the great decline in international educational exchanges that some feared after 9/11 has not materialized, though, according to the most recent figures from the Institute of International Education, the rate of increase, which was quite rapid in recent years, has slowed noticeably.

Most positively, we are beginning to see active campaigns to counter efforts to restrict international student enrollment. Many of you may have seen the full-page ad that ran in the New York Times 10 days ago [June 11] with the headline: "International Exchange Programs: An Investment in National Security." The ad, part of a communications and political action campaign sponsored by the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange and the Institute of International Education, highlights the benefits of bringing students from around the world to our campuses -- and of encouraging U.S. students to study abroad.

The ad's main message, one I strongly endorse, is that we make our nation more -- not less -- secure when we welcome international students. Their first-hand experience here can replace stereotypes with a realistic, nuanced view of our society and culture and can help us build a global network of friendship and understanding.

This message is central to the report of the Strategic Task Force on International Student Access convened by NAFSA, the Association of International Educators. Citing views expressed by President Bush, by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and by Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, the Task Force argues that "we must engage this world without walls, this indivisible humanity. We must learn to understand our similarities and respect our differences. We must continue to nurture our greatest foreign policy asset: the friendship of those who know our country because we have welcomed them as students."

In an editorial last September, the New York Times urged that we increase, not lessen, efforts to "spread our influence and understanding of culture." The editorial went on to say: "Higher education is one of the best methods we have of spreading the word about who we are and of exposing our citizens to non-Americans. Bringing foreign students onto our campuses is among the best favors we can do ourselves."

One often-cited benefit of a strong international student exchange program is the foreign policy advantage it gives us when these students later rise to leadership posts in their home nations. For more than 50 years, the U.S. has been educating world leaders -- King Abdullah of Jordan, President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, Kofi Annan, to name but a few contemporary instances. Britain, Australia and other major destinations for international study can supply further examples. The Ambassador to the United Nations from Iran, Jarad Zarif, is a graduate of my campus.

In the U.S., what I would call the national security/public policy argument for welcoming international students is persuasive, particularly in these times. Nevertheless, I consider it only one element of the great package of educational and social benefits we reap from having international students on our campuses. Like other aspects of diversity, a strong international presence enriches classroom education, the campus environment, and the experience of all our students.

Preparing our students to move in an increasingly interconnected global society is part of the 21st century educational mission. I see it as a mission that goes far beyond learning the skills of international business, or the politics of the European Union, or even that all-too-rare skill for native English-speakers, fluency in another language. At San Francisco State University we feel a responsibility to impart values, as well as knowledge. Chief among those values are awareness of and respect for cultures and values other than one’s own; the ability to see individuals, not stereotypes; and the capacity to exchange ideas, even to disagree, while not losing sight of our common humanity.

Our students gain as much from the international students on campus as the international students do from them. I see this exceptionally clearly at San Francisco State, where our diverse, "majority minority" student body is further enriched by a substantial international student population. As a faculty member once observed, "When you walk across this campus, you walk across the world." We regard our international character as one of our great assets and are proud to rank second, nationally, among master’s institutions in our international student enrollment -- with almost 2,500. If we add to that number the roughly 3500 non-visa students who were born abroad, over 25% of our student body was born in a country other than the U.S..

Not a day goes by that I do not overhear a student conversation between two people born in different countries, educated in different languages, but conversing in English -- a language native to neither of them.

With so many San Francisco State students -- whether visa students or residents -- who have strong family or personal ties to nations around the globe, the world is very close and very real on our campus. This can prove to be a challenge, when international affairs raise anxiety, and sometimes anger, among student groups. San Francisco State felt the pressure of world events especially strongly last year, when Middle East tensions played out in the form of an angry but non-violent confrontation between Jewish and Arab students after a pro-Israel rally.

We were determined to use the event as a teachable moment, and some very good things came out of it, including a year of programs dealing with various aspects of the Middle East situation. On one occasion, we brought two scholars -- one from Israel, one from Palestine, to campus -- for a discussion of the prospects for peace. After the event, both men commented that they felt they had had on our campus a kind of conversation in which they never would have engaged on home ground. And this international faculty exchange, brief as it was, gave our students and faculty an exceptional window into the world -- and the people -- behind the headlines.

If the presence of international students and faculty is so valuable even here in San Francisco, where our cosmopolitan and globally-minded region includes people from many nations, imagine how great the impact of an international student cohort is in the many communities across the country that are far less diverse.

The director of San Francisco State’s Office of International Programs, Dr. Yenbo Wu, once held a similar post at the University of Nebraska in Kearney. He observed that a considerable number of native students there had never stepped beyond the boundaries of the state. For them, the international students offered a stimulating -- and educational -- opportunity to encounter a bigger world. On and beyond the campus, the university’s international students were regarded as a community asset. Families vied to host them, and the international students, in turn, went into K-12 classrooms, making presentations about their countries and cultures. This is the friendship-building of international study at its grass-roots best.

The economic benefits of hosting international students are worth noting, though they are not, in my mind, nearly as significant a concern as those I have mentioned. According to NAFSA, international students contribute some $12 billion annually to the U.S. economy. Almost three-quarters of the undergraduates pay full tuition -- a boon to many college budgets. Especially in the sciences, international graduate students are a central source of the research assistants and T.A.’s upon which many universities rely heavily. Business ties can take root here, as international students who go on to establish successful companies in their home countries are likely to establish international trade and commercial ties through familiar connections.

With so much to gain by encouraging international students to come to our campuses, the U.S. needs to take a frank look at the barriers it has actively, or passively, erected and the strategies it can employ to remove them. Among these barriers I would list our lack of an organized national effort to attract international students; the size and complexity of our educational system and the difficulty foreign students may have in making choices about it; complex and discouraging government regulations concerning visas and student tracking, and a cost of education that limits the socio-economic diversity of the international student population.

In a report entitled, "In America’s Interest: Welcoming International Students," the NAFSA Task Force urges that this nation develop a strategic approach to promoting international student enrollment. The government, in consultation with the higher education community and others, should develop a recruitment and access plan that would be supported by national policy; should coordinate the roles of the three federal agencies involved with international student recruitment (State, Commerce, Education); and should revise immigration laws affecting international students so as to remove unnecessary, unworkable, or outmoded regulations that limit student access.

We do need to take such actions, but at the same time, we also need a change in attitude. Long before 9/11, the U.S. was, as a nation, largely passive when it came to bringing in international students. We have never mounted the kind of concerted national campaign to attract and encourage them that many other nations have done so well. We have simply assumed that we were a top-choice destination and the students would come to us. As a result, while the number of international students coming to the U.S. has increased, our share of that student market has shrunk.

Those of us who recognize the value of a strong international student program need to work harder to make that case more broadly, to build support from our campuses up through all levels of leadership.

Throughout these remarks I have spoken of international student exchanges, yet I have not mentioned the other, critically important, side of the equation: U.S. students and faculty who take part in overseas programs. While this is not the subject of this session, I would like to say a few words about it. If we anticipate such great opening of minds and forming of positive attitudes in international students who come to us, should we not seek the same benefits for our students -- and our faculty?

Yet our national record is nothing to be proud of. While the number of U.S. students participating in study abroad programs continues to rise -- going up by 55 percent over the last five years -- the percentage is dismal, far lower than that of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and most European nations. Far, far too few U.S. students choose -- or are able -- to make a study abroad experience part of their college education. Even though San Francisco State leads the 23-campus California State University system and ranks 18th, nationally, amongst comprehensive university campuses, in the number of students participating in study abroad programs, we, like all but a handful of U.S. campuses, find that in percentage terms, participation is still very limited.

Surely our students -- the future leaders of a nation with a formidable set of international involvements and responsibilities -- require knowledge of, and openness to, the world and need an opportunity to understand more vividly how the world views us.

Nothing provides these insights as powerfully as first-hand international experience. Today, more than 40 years later, I still remember vividly my first overseas trip. The three years I spent at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, teaching American literature as a Smith-Mundt Professor and Fulbright Fellow, were a revelation. I realized that I had not fully understood my own culture until I stood outside it.

I wish that we were able to make a study abroad experience part of every student's college education. We can do much more to help students surmount the financial barriers that keep some of them home. We can also work harder to help them want to take advantage of the international opportunities their institutions offer.

That goes for faculty, as well. The current issue of The Chronicle Review, a part of The Chronicle of Higher Education, contains a provocative essay entitled "American Historians Would Do Well to Get Out of the Country." Its author, Richard Pells, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, contrasts the "cosmopolitanism" of an earlier generation of U.S. historians with the "parochialism" of their contemporary counterparts. The earlier generation felt that the distinctive American experience could best be understood and explained by contrasting it with that of other cultures, other nations. Travel was thus a part of scholarship.

But many of today'’s "Americanists," as Pells terms them, "write and teach about the United States from the 'inside.' It seems rarely to occur to them that they might learn more about the strengths and deficiencies of America by examining its history and culture from a perspective outside the national borders. Nor do they consider it crucial, as their predecessors did, to spend time abroad," he says.

Pells admits that financial considerations limit some scholars who would otherwise choose to go abroad. Fulbrights, for instance, have not kept up with faculty salaries, making overseas teaching a financial burden. Still, he says, too many of his colleagues are simply not interested in making international experience part of their scholarship. Pells concludes that "the menace of terrorism" may eventually "compel Americanists to adopt, again, a global perspective."

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in December, 2001, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke of the "deeper awareness" bred of September 11 of "the bonds that bind us all -- in pain as in prosperity." This "new reality," he said, "can no longer be ignored. It must be confronted." I hope you all agree. International student exchange helps the world’s future leaders prepare to grapple with the challenges and opportunities of this new world. Let us redouble our efforts to promote and support this flow of people around the globe.

Thank you.