[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 21 (Thursday, March 5, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E309-E310]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 5, 1998

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to my colleagues' 
attention the December 12, 1997 speech by former Congressman John 
Brademas, entitled ``Educational and Cultural Exchanges Across the 
Atlantic.''
  I ask that the full text of Dr. Brademas' remarks be printed in the 
Congressional Record.
  Those remarks follows:

          Educational & Cultural Exchanges Across The Atlantic

                         (By Dr. John Brademas)

       I am delighted to have been asked by Wouter Wilton to speak 
     to you today about educational and cultural exchanges across 
     the Atlantic.
       My own links with Europe, let me say at the outset, are 
     several, and they are deep. My late father was born in 
     Kalamata, Greece. In fact, I am the first native-born 
     American of Greek origin to have been elected to the Congress 
     of the United States.
       After graduating from Harvard, where I well remembered 
     Secretary of State George Marshall's famous Marshall Plan 
     speech, I spent three years of graduate study at Oxford 
     University where I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the 
     anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain from the mid-1920s 
     through the first year of the Spanish Civil War.
       I did most of my research through visits to a library in 
     Amsterdam and interviews with Spanish anarchists in exile 
     living in Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
       As a Member of Congress, I traveled to Czechoslovakia, 
     France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain, the Soviet 
     Union, Yugoslavia and the United Kingdom.
       You will not be surprised then that I enthusiastically 
     applaud the efforts of the Delegation of ``Team Europe USA'' 
     of the European Commission. For although for many of us 
     participating in this meeting, the connections between the 
     United States and Western Europe have been natural, indeed 
     essential, to our lives, I do not think that even well-
     educated Americans know much about the European Union per se.
       Indeed, given the importance of Japan, Korea and especially 
     China, and in light of the continuing need for oil from the 
     Middle East and lack of stability there, is the US-European 
     relationship still fundamental?
       Now my Harvard classmate, Sam Huntington, in a powerful 
     essay in Foreign Affairs last year, notes that the United 
     States is pulled in three directions--Latin America, Asia and 
     Europe.
       ``The third pull,'' says Huntington, ``toward Europe is the 
     most important. Shared values, institutions, history, and 
     culture dictate the continuing close association of the 
     United States and Europe. Both necessary and desirable is the 
     further development of institutional ties across the 
     Atlantic, including negotiation of a European Free Trade 
     Agreement and creation of a North Atlantic Economic 
     Organization as a counterpart to NATO,'' which Huntington 
     describes as ``the security organization of Western 
     civilization.''
       Although I do not accept Huntington's contention that 
     peoples reared in Eastern Orthodox or Muslim civilizations 
     are incapable of learning the habits and practices of 
     democracy, I do agree with his assertion of the primacy for 
     the United States of our ties with Europe.


                         educational exchanges

       You must understand that the subject of the study of other 
     countries and cultures is one that has preoccupied me for a 
     long time. Thirty-one years ago, as a Member of Congress, I 
     wrote--and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law--the 
     International Education Act, to provide Federal funds to 
     colleges and universities in the United States for teaching 
     and research about other countries. Unfortunately, Congress 
     failed to appropriate the money to implement the statute, and 
     I believe the United States--of course, not for that reason 
     alone--has suffered a great deal in the ensuing years from 
     our ignorance of such places as Vietnam, Iran and Central 
     America.
       When, in 1981, I became President of New York University, I 
     determined to strengthen the University's offerings in the 
     international field.
       Already powerful in the study of French civilization, we 
     established the Alexander S. Onassis Center for Hellenic 
     Studies--I have told you of my Greek ancestry--and the Casa 
     Italiana Zerilli-Marimo.
       With a gift from the late Milton Petrie of New York and his 
     wife, Carroll Petrie, we instituted the King Juan Carlos I of 
     Spain professorship of Spanish culture and civilization under 
     which we have brought eminent scholars annually to lecture at 
     NYU.
       We founded the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic 
     Studies and, in our Stern School of Business, a Center on 
     U.S.-Japanese Business and Economic Studies.
       My Gaelic-speaking successor as NYU President, L. Jay 
     Oliva, inaugurated Ireland House.
       And only last April, I had the honor of welcoming His 
     Majesty, King Juan Carlos I, to our campus to dedicate the 
     King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center of New York University. In 
     the presence of His Majesty, Queen Sofia and the First Lady 
     of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, we officially 
     opened the Center.
       As you know, several American universities have programs or 
     centers on Latin America but there are almost none on Spain. 
     We at NYU intend that the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center 
     become the premier institution in the United States for the 
     study of modern Spain, its economy, history, and politics.
       We have already in recent months enjoyed visits from former 
     Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and his successor, Jose Maria 
     Aznar.
       Here I draw your particular attention to a bequest from the 
     late actress, Paulette Goddard, with which we have endowed a 
     chair in European Studies and created, in memory of her late 
     husband, the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, the Remarque 
     Institute, directed by Professor Tony R. Judt and aimed 
     specifically at promoting the study of Europe and 
     facilitation of communications between Americans and 
     Europeans.
       I think it appropriate here if I simply quote some lines 
     from the statement of the objectives of Remarque Institute: 
     ``[T]he study of Europe--European history, languages, and 
     culture--is no longer a mainstay of educational programs in 
     the United States. In high schools and in colleges it is not 
     uncommon for students to graduate with only the flimsiest 
     acquaintance with Europe. . . . The overall result is not 
     only that the study of Europe . . . has declined in U.S. 
     colleges, but that the sort of scholarly expertise on which 
     journalists, politicians, business people, and the arts world 
     might draw and with which they used to interact is much 
     reduced.''
       At New York University, I trust I have made clear, we are 
     in large measure Eurocentric in our offerings, especially in 
     our Department of History.
       And I must also comment on our students, for of the more 
     than 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States, 
     NYU ranks fourth in the number of non-immigrant international 
     students on campus.
       Today over 3,600 students from 120 countries--12.5 percent 
     of our total enrollment--are pursuing academic degrees at 
     NYU.
       Also this year, 175 students are participating in NYU Study 
     Abroad Programs in Florence, Paris, London and Prague, while 
     more students from our professional and graduate schools are 
     studying in other countries.
       Yet if it is true, as the Institute of International 
     Education reports, that the United States hosts more foreign 
     students by far than any other country--457,984--that number 
     has remained relatively flat for seven years.
       In the 1995-96 academic year, the total number of Americans 
     studying abroad was only 89,000, or about one-half of one 
     percent of the student population in the United Sates. I 
     nonetheless note that this figure marked an increase of 5.7 
     percent in the number of U.S. students going abroad, 
     following an 11 percent rise the previous year. I add that 
     about two-thirds of American students who did academic work 
     in other countries in 1995-96 went to Western Europe.
       I offer these facts at a time when, as all of you know, 
     there has been a general retreat in the United States from 
     investment in international diplomacy. That retreat is 
     reflected in cuts in U.S. Information Agency student exchange 
     programs, near elimination in some countries of the Fulbright 
     exchanges, shutdowns of American consulates, harsh attacks on 
     the United Nations, failure to pay our UN dues and, most 
     recently, denunciation of the Kyoto Protocol on global 
     warming by Republican members of the United States Senate.


                           cultural exchanges

       Now if I bring to the discussion of international education 
     the experience of a former legislator and university 
     president, I wear yet another hat that touches directly on 
     the subject of educational and cultural exchanges.
       In 1994 President Clinton did me the honor of appointing me 
     chairman of the President's Committee on the Arts and the 
     Humanities.

[[Page E310]]

     Composed of 45 persons--32 private citizens and 13 heads of 
     Federal departments and agencies with cultural programs--our 
     Committee is charged by the President with encouraging 
     greater private sector support and more public-private 
     partnerships for the arts and the humanities in the United 
     States.
       Earlier this year the President's Committee--of which the 
     First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is Honorary Chair--
     released Creative America, a Report to the President--and the 
     country--containing over 50 specific recommendations for 
     action.
       One of the major recommendations in our report to President 
     Clinton was to expand international cultural and educational 
     relations.
       In Creative America, the President's Committee asserted 
     that ``international artistic and scholarly exchanges are 
     more important than ever in a world in which ideas, 
     information and technologies travel freely across national 
     borders.''
       Certainly, the American economy is linked to international 
     markets, as the current troubles in Asia vividly demonstrate, 
     and as a global power, the United States has a vital interest 
     in supporting programs in our schools, colleges and 
     universities that increase our knowledge and understanding of 
     other countries, cultures and languages.
       In this connection, the Fulbright and U.S. Information 
     Agency Exchange Programs have played a crucial role in 
     promoting democratic values around the world.
       Everyone here knows that not only have the Fulbright 
     exchanges brought to the United States at critical stages in 
     their careers future presidents and prime ministers, 
     university presidents and scholars, influential journalists 
     and business leaders but have also opened doors of 
     opportunity for Americans to study and teach in other 
     countries.
       It is, therefore, a matter of great distress to members of 
     the President's Committee that in recent years, government 
     funding of the Fulbright program and other international 
     educational and and cultural exchanges has been sharply 
     reduced even as private sector support for such efforts has 
     been leveling off.
       In light of the nature of the present US Congress, I'm glad 
     to report that a few months ago the Senate and House of 
     Representatives voted funds for educational and cultural 
     exchanges at approximately current levels. One program, the 
     Higher Education Collaboration between the United States and 
     the European Union, will provide grants to be made jointly by 
     the US Department of Education and the European Commission to 
     help American and European colleges and universities with 
     student exchanges.
       In like fashion, I hope that more business firms and 
     private foundations in the United States and elsewhere will 
     support programs of international studies at colleges and 
     universities in their respective countries as well as 
     international scholarly exchanges. For example, my colleagues 
     at NYU are now discussing prospects for a campaign to raise 
     funds to endow fellowships for students from Spain and the 
     Spanish-speaking world to pursue graduate study in the 
     humanities and social sciences at our university and 
     fellowships for NYU students to go to Spain or Latin American 
     for post-graduate work.
       Even as we in the United States must do far better than we 
     have been doing in supporting international studies at our 
     own colleges and universities and scholarly and cultural 
     exchanges with other countries, I hope you will permit me to 
     suggest that there should be more attention in Europe to 
     learning about America.
       When I was at Oxford 45 years ago, study of the United 
     States ended with the League of Nations. And while there's 
     been some progress, it's only in recent years that Oxford has 
     established an Institute for American Studies.
       And with the increasing integration of the European 
     Community and the prospect of adding new members from East 
     and Central Europe in the near future, European students need 
     to learn more about each other. It is, therefore, most 
     encouraging that the European Union is supporting several 
     programs to encourage intra-European study and has allocated 
     funds to include students from East and Central Europe, 
     including Russia.
       Allow me here to mention a project on which I have been 
     working for the past two years with colleagues in the United 
     States and Europe. I speak a Chairman of the National 
     Endowment for Democracy, a Federally-funded, nongovernmental, 
     nonpartisan foundation that makes grants to private 
     organizations that champion the institutions and practices of 
     a democratic society. My colleagues I plan to establish a 
     Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeastern 
     Europe, to be located administratively in Salonika, Greece. 
     The programs and activities of the Center will be carried out 
     in the several countries of Southeastern Europe--the Balkans. 
     These programs are intended to be multinational in scope 
     bringing together participants from the various countries of 
     the region.
       The purpose of the Center's multinational approach is to 
     foster greater interchange and understanding among the 
     peoples of the area and to develop networks among individuals 
     and groups committed to the democratic and peaceful 
     development of Southeastern Europe.
       For example, one Center project would support the writing 
     of school textbooks and improvement of pedagogy at all levels 
     in the countries of the region. Textbook treatments of 
     historical relationships are of real consequence in 
     Southeastern Europe. There are few direct cultural and 
     educational links among peoples in the Balkans and the views 
     they take, of their neighbors are extremely important in 
     shaping political attitudes. We hope to forge better ties 
     through a series of workshops for university professors of 
     Balkan history from throughout the region.
       The governing body of the Center will be composed chiefly 
     of persons from the region itself. To finance whatever 
     projects the Center will undertake, approaches will be made 
     to corporations, private foundations and the European 
     Commission.
       Certainly my colleagues and I who hope to see a Center to 
     support the development of democratic institutions in this 
     troubled part of Europe believe that education, at every 
     level, must play a crucial role.
       Now the activities of the President's Committee on the Arts 
     and the Humanities and the National Endowment for Democracy 
     are not the only ones that continue to bring me to 
     existential connection with Europe.
       For example, I'm also chairman of the American Ditchley 
     Foundation. Ditchley Park, as many of you know, a few miles 
     outside of Oxford, England, is a lovely 18th-century house 
     that for some 40 years has been a place for conferences on 
     all manner of subjects. I myself chaired a symposium there 
     two years ago on ``Corruption in Democratic Societies'' and 
     will next February lead another on ``Corruption: What to do 
     About it?''. Law enforcement authorities, business and 
     political leaders and scholars from several countries, 
     chiefly Europe and the United States will participate. As the 
     battle against corruption has won new visibility on the part 
     of OECD member states, I hope this issue will command 
     increased attention in the European Commission Parliament.
       Also, a few weeks ago in both Washington, DC and New York, 
     I was one of 25 Americans who joined a like number of 
     Spaniards from the worlds of business, government and the 
     universities to discuss matters of mutual interest. We shall 
     meet next year in Barcelona.
       Here I recall that early in my Congressional career, I 
     regularly took part in what was known as the Anglo-American 
     Parliamentary Group on Africa. Members of our House and 
     Senate, the House of Commons and House of Lords, would meet 
     periodically to discuss Africa but this arrangement was also 
     one of the few venues that enabled British and American 
     politicians to know each other personally and talk about the 
     politics of our two countries.
       Ought there not be established a systematic program of 
     exchanges between and among Members of the US Congress, 
     Members of the European Parliament and of the parliaments of 
     EU member states?
       I add that next week in Athens, under the auspices of the 
     Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to take part in 
     the third meeting of a Forum on Greece, Turkey and the United 
     States. Seven persons from each country--nearly all of us 
     having earlier served our respective governments in some 
     capacity--will meet to discuss problems of common concern--
     the Aegean, Cyprus, relations with the European Union--and 
     hope to build some useful bridges.
       And that bridge building across the Atlantic is, after all, 
     what, or so it seems to me and, I take it, to all of you, 
     what we should be about.
       Now I realize that there are many more aspects to the 
     transatlantic relationship than I have here addressed: trade, 
     the expansion of NATO, what to do about Bosnia, how to deal 
     with Iran and Iraq, to name a few.
       And I could add to this list of challenges to revive--to 
     strengthen and not diminish--US-European exchanges. Certainly 
     I hope that President Clinton will make this commitment a top 
     priority on his foreign policy agenda.
       I think it appropriate, therefore, that I conclude these 
     remarks by recalling to you the words of the signatories of 
     the North Atlantic Treaty over four decades ago:
       ``They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common 
     heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the 
     principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of 
     law.''
       That's still a pretty good foundation!

       

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