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War on terror risks global exchange
By JOHN J. WOOD
Reporter Contributor
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the resulting war on terrorism have put at risk the great promise and benefits of international educational exchange, June Noronha, a leader in the field of international education, told a UB audience on Feb. 12.
"The events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath have been earthshaking for our country" said Noronha, who is associate dean of multicultural education at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minn., and past-president of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the largest organization of international educators in the world.
"After that horrific attack, discussion inevitably focused on reducing and tightening entry to the United States. Suddenly, everyone was under scrutiny and legislative reform was unavoidable. The challenge was not to demonize entire communities and countries, and to separate out those with honest intentions who respect and appreciate this country."
June Noronha (left) chats after her lecture with Janice Nersinger, program director for overseas programs for the English Language Institute; Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education, and Sami Hanna, a doctoral student from Syria.
PHOTO: John J. Wood
International students and scholars, in particular, have been singled out for special scrutiny, noted Noronha. "Immediately after 9/11, the government and the media linked the 19 hijackers to international students, even though only one entered the country on a student visa," she said.
Of the 30 million visitors to the United States, only 2 percent are international students, yet the first debates and legislation following Sept. 11 centered on international students, despite the fact that they already are the most closely scrutinized category of non-immigrant visitors to the U.S., she said.
"Inaccurate and alarmist rhetoric, which continues today, obscures the indisputable reality that foreign students are overwhelmingly a net asset for U.S. security and the most under-appreciated success of U.S. foreign policy—not to mention the important cultural, educational, and economic benefits for communities across the country," Noronha said.
"It is remarkable how much those of us who work in international education believe that international mobility is a core issue for U.S. public policy, and those in the federal government see it as a peripheral one, or for that matter, how little the general public even knows about the issue."
Noronha, who was invited to speak at UB as part of a lecture series organized by the Council on International Studies and Programs and co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Education, pointed out that international students:
Bring an international dimension to American campuses, change the way courses are taught and enlarge the understanding that U.S. students bring to issues
Take with them to their home countries an exposure to American values, culture and society, which can only contribute to improved relations among countries
Pay long-term dividends to our country
Move on to conduct research and do business with their U.S. counterparts, particularly when, as many do, they assume leadership positions in their home countries.
The impact of events since fall 2001—"on our national consciousness, on our view of ourselves, on others' view of us"—are only beginning to be realized, Noronha said. "Most of all, we have become wary as a nation—a nation that is/was the most optimistic and, I would add, one of the most generous in the world."
All areas of international education—from foreign-language programs to study abroad and exchange programs—have been affected by these events, "by the discourse on terrorism and national security, by ensuing legislation and by reallocation of resources," Noronha said.
"For international educators, our soul searching has been about whether people understand how important international education and exchange are for breaking down barriers between people and for promoting peace among nations," she said.
"Even though the majority of the surveys of institutions and publics suggests that international education and global knowledge continue to be regarded as more important than they were prior to Sept. 11, we have also seen throughout the country a willingness to make a trade off, surrendering civil liberties for a sense of heightened security."
Noronha, who began her term as president of NAFSA a few months before Sept. 11, subsequently became one of the leading advocates of international education in the difficult months that followed the attacks.
Extensive media attention focusing on the perceived threat of international students was difficult to combat. "Much of my own work as NAFSA president was providing responses and strategies to address this national hysteria."
"These views, argued persistently since Sept. 11, seek to persuade Americans to lead from their insecurities and fears, rather than their strengths and hopes. This is not the America we see. Nor, in our opinion, is it the nation that most Americans know."
The effects of these changes and of the many recent legislative initiatives are only now being felt, Noronha pointed out. She addressed some of the new legislation that directly affects international exchange, including the Border Security Act, which implements a new tracking system for international students and scholars; the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act; the Interagency Panel for Science and Security, which will set limits on which foreigners have access to sensitive areas of scientific and technical research, and the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act, which mandates greater scrutiny and background checks for foreign microbiologists.
As a result of this flurry of new laws and regulations, international educators have had their hands full in recent months, Noronha said. They have had to institute new procedures, become even more conversant with legal issues as laws are passed, implement regulations before final authorization with little guidance, help draft the regulations themselves, accompany students to interviews by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the FBI, and defend against accusations of being unpatriotic and naive about terrorism.
The Border Security Act called for the implementation of SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System), a Web-based data system developed by the INS for tracking international students and scholars, ostensibly to prevent terrorists from entering the country on a student visa.
U.S. institutions of higher education were required to join SEVIS by Feb. 15, 2003. UB, which already is a SEVIS-approved institution, is testing the database system it will use to provide tracking information to SEVIS on the university's 4,000 international students and scholars. SEVIS will be connected to consular offices overseas where visas are issued, ports of entry, the INS and the schools where international students enroll.
Noronha began her lecture by relating the story of her own experience as an international student who left her native country, Kenya, and came to Macalester College in Minnesota in the late 1960s on a student visa. Her parents had emigrated from India to Nairobi, Kenya, where she and her siblings grew up.
She ended up studying in the United States "by sheer chance." After completing high school, she expected to go to the United Kingdom for higher education.
"On a lark, I agreed to a dare to go into the United States Information Service (USIS) office to apply to an American college. No one in my family or circle knew anyone American or anyone who had been to America, which remained an exotic concept to us. I walked in, sat down and said the familiar words—'I want to study in America.'"
Several months after submitting applications to 10 U.S. schools, Noronha learned she had been admitted to all 10, including Cornell and Syracuse, and even had been granted scholarships by most.
She noted that she would not have ended up in the U.S. if the USIS advising center had not been there, if the advisor she spoken to had not been eager to assist her, and if it had not been relatively easy to obtain a student visa. "I would not have ended up in the U.S. if Britain or another country had stepped up efforts to attract students to their countries, as has happened since Sept. 11," she added.
For more than half a century, the U.S. has been the leading destination for international students, and many who have studied here have gone on to leading roles in their own countries and remained good friends of the United States. In the post-9/11 era, however, the continuing vitality of international educational exchange as a key part of American public diplomacy is in question, Noronha said.
"In a world that is increasingly unpredictable and violent, we have this evidence among our own students—successive generations of international leaders who left their native countries to study abroad and ended up speaking the language of, and breaking bread with, strangers and former foes, building alliances of friendship for a less fractured world," she said.
"In a small way, I represent one of those students myself. Now more than ever, we need to speak each other's languages, understand each other's religious and cultural traditions, walk in each other's fields, eat in each other's homes, play with each other's children, in our own nation and with other nations."