This week, NAFSA’s Senior Advisor for Public Policy, Vic Johnson, commented on Barack Obama’s words before a Town Hall in Istanbul, Turkey last year. There, President Obama had made a statement on the great benefit of exchanges between young people across country boundaries, saying:
“Simple exchanges can break down walls between us, for when people come together and speak to one another and share a common experience, then their common humanity is revealed. We are reminded that we’re joined together by our pursuit of a life that’s productive and purposeful, and when that happens mistrust begins to fade and our smaller differences no longer overshadow the things that we share. And that’s where progress begins.”
How beautiful those words are, and what truth they hold. And how damning for the current administration when they are extrapolated beyond exchanges with the Muslim world—which Obama was discussing—to academic exchanges with Cuba, which is precisely what Vic Johnson did in the Tuesday press conference hosted by the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET). Johnson’s comment:
“… There was no Cuba exception to the President’s statement to students in Turkey that ‘exchanges can break down the walls between us… [and the retention of restrictions] serves no articulated foreign policy, hemispheric, or public diplomacy purpose of this administration… precludes the very kinds of exchanges that the United States has used with demonstrable success to foster and support political change in other nondemocratic societies, and denies American students and academics the opportunity to know another society whose evolution will impact our country.
All momentum is not lost on this push, and NAFSA and other groups are standing firmly behind the legislation we mentioned last month, H.R. 4645, which would restore the right of all Americans to travel and thereby restart the educational exchanges these organizations support. That bill was taken up by the House Agriculture Committee today.
(Photo from www.cafepress.com)
