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A More Global Yale?
Commerce
and culture no longer stop at national borders, and neither does
the influence of a world-class university. At the most recent AYA
Assembly, delegates from around the world talked with Yale officials
and students about bringing the world to Yale -- and Yale to the
world.
February
1999
by Mark Alden Branch '86
Lest
we think the current talk about "globalization" is a new idea for the American university,
two Yale professors helped put the matter in perspective during
the Association of Yale Alumni's most recent Assembly, titled "The
Internationalization of Yale." On the first day of the gathering,
on October 22, Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead reminded delegates
that universities "have always provided a place where people were
in contact across international lines. That is one of the defining
and constant features of universities." That evening, DeVane Professor
of History Gaddis Smith
traced Yale's growing international consciousness to 1898, when
the United States became a player on the world stage in the Spanish-American
War. Smith told of how U.S. involvement in Asia led to the admission
of students from the Phillipines and the founding of the influential
Yale-in-China program. President Arthur Twining Hadley even proposed
founding a "School of Colonial Administration" at the graduate level
to train leaders for the outposts of the American empire.
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Who
will Yale's future students be? What will they learn? Where
will they learn?
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But while
attention to the wider world has been a fact of Yale life for most
of its existence, revolutions in communication and transportation
have made global contact more common -- and, some say, more critical.
The Assembly, which drew 300 delegates plus another 30 invited alumni
who live outside the United States, was designed to address three
questions about how Yale should respond to increasing global exchange:
Who will Yale's future students be? What will they learn? and Where
will they learn?
The
first question proved the most contentious. In a variation
on previous disputes about admissions, it was the alumni who pressed
the case for expanding the number of foreign students, while representatives
of the administration defended the University's decision to remain
"an American university." As Provost Alison Richard put it: "I see that as different from saying this is
an international university with representation from around the
world. We do not aspire to that."
Still,
Richard said, the percentage of international students has risen from 4 percent in 1993 to 7.5 percent this
year (including Canadians, who account for 2 percent of the student
body but are treated the same as U.S. students in admissions and
financial aid), and she suggested that the number could go somewhat
higher, though she said that "15 percent sounds too high to me."
But on
several occasions during the three days of panels and discussions,
alumni delegates stood up to call for a higher percentage, or for
no limits on international students (and, concurrently, the institution
of need-blind admissions
to insure that more international students could come to Yale).
While Corporation member David Gergen endorsed "moving toward" need-blind
admissions for foreign students, he also said the Corporation "thinks
it would be a mistake" to put domestic and international students
on equal footing in admissions. "It would change the nature of Yale,"
he said.
Undergraduates
who were invited to breakfast with delegates said they felt that
having foreign nationals as their fellow students enriched their
Yale experience."The
value is in the perspective they provide," said Erika Greenfest,
a Pierson junior. "When we're learning about some other country,
it's terrific to have someone here from that country." As for boosting
international enrollment, Morse junior Bailey Hand said, "I think
it would be great to have more foreigners. But I'm not sure I'd
want to give up my place."
In a
session on alumni roles in Yale's internationalization, panelist
Alexander Macridis '84, a native of Greece who returned to his homeland
and founded a Yale Club there, said Yale's financial aid policy
toward international students, while improved recently, makes it
hard to recruit students. "There is always the fear that there won't
be the resources for the person to attend," he said. "You're afraid
to sell Yale too much for fear they'll be disappointed. Need-blind
admissions should be done across the board. We're losing kids to
MIT and Harvard, which are need-blind, and that drives me nuts."
As
for where Yale students learn, most of the discussion centered on
the question of undergraduates taking their junior year abroad
or participating in other foreign-study programs. While Yale students
do travel to foreign countries, especially in summers, to do academic
research, the number who study abroad in lieu of time spent at Yale
is small, Richard said. Ninety students took their junior year abroad
last year, up from 64 in 1994-95. "Yale students really love being
at Yale," said Richard, so it's a problem for them to go away."
Students added that it is hard to find foreign programs -- other
than Yale's own in London -- for which Yale will grant academic
credit, and that even a semester away from Yale can make it difficult
to fulfill the requirements of some majors.
Richard
emphasized changes in the University's financial-aid policy that
relieve students of the need to earn money in the summer so that
they may use that time for travel and research. Gustav Ranis, who
directs Yale's Center for International and Area Studies, added
that the Center provides $1 million in grants annually to assist
graduate and undergraduate students who want to do research for
dissertations and senior essays abroad.
Ranis
and YCIAS also figured in the discussion of what students will learn,
internationally speaking. The Center, founded in 1983, has become
the locus for an international and interdisciplinary approach to
education. "The distinction between domestic and international is
becoming outmoded," said Ranis. "Departments are like fortresses.
The future lies in the edges of disciplines, where they touch each
other. We need more joint appointments between departments and schools."
More
interest in other nations and cultures is also leading Yale to an
expansion of its use of foreign languages in the classroom,
said Nina Garrett, who was appointed this fall as Yale's director
of foreign language study, a newly created post. Already, language
departments are offering classes that go beyond their traditional
focus on literature, and Garrett raised the possibility of bringing
to Yale a concept known as "foreign language across the curriculum,"
in which foreign-language sections of some courses would be available.
"We hope to develop the technological basis to work in any combination
of language X and discipline Y," said Garrett.
The power
of technology to promote international dialogue was demonstrated
most convincingly at the session on the role of alumni abroad. While
two of the three panelists were physically present for the meeting,
the third, Caroline Drees '93, was in the United Arab Emirates,
where she is a senior correspondent for Reuters. Drees appeared
larger than life on a Davies Auditorium projection screen via video
teleconferencing, an achievement that left delegates with no doubt
that the world is getting smaller. 
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