By J. Michael Adams

Dr. Adams was one of approximately 120 presidents invited to the Bush Administration U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education on January 5-6, 2006. This column reacts to the Summit, which featured the unveiling of President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative and other measures to boost international education.

CEOs survey the globe in search of new markets. Diseases and environmental calamities spread rapidly across borders. Terrorists attack targets everywhere. And yet many of us remain limited by local perspectives, unable to communicate with billions and ignorant of much of our world.

To help strengthen international education, the Bush Administration hosted a special summit in January with a selected group of U.S. university presidents. There, President George W. Bush unveiled a new National Security Language Initiative, which features a $114 million investment in teaching languages critical to national security. He explained that to protect this country we must spread freedom. To do that, he said, we must “communicate in the language of the people we’re trying to help” and “show them we care about their culture.”

The government also promised to improve visa policies, which have been blamed for deterring international students from studying in America, and introduced measures including joint overseas trips by government and college officials to recruit international students, new Fulbright grants and assistance for low-income and community college students to study abroad. All good and needed things. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reinforced that “our government and our universities must forge a new partnership for education exchange, a partnership that rests on new thinking and new action.”

She’s exactly right. We need new thinking, however, the government’s primary motivation is based in a very traditional and limited mindset. The oft-repeated refrain is that global lessons are necessary to preserve national security and advance national interests. It’s true that in an interconnected world threats can spread quickly, and Americans must understand those dangers. It’s more than a little frightening that after September 11, 2001, the FBI urgently sought volunteers who could speak Arabic. We were both deaf and dumb to the hatred and fears of so many. In our globalized world, however, thinking exclusively in terms of national security and national interests is a recipe for failure and tragedy.

At the most practical level, learning global lessons is integral for professional success. Corporate leaders predict that the next workforce generation will need to be able to function as easily abroad and across different cultures as in this country. Our tightly woven global economy demands that individuals understand and collaborate with those from different cultures.

Beyond professional concerns, there is a moral and humanitarian imperative. Global problems and international threats cannot be overcome in isolation. Diseases like AIDS circumnavigate the globe effortlessly, while natural forces and human ambassadors of destruction do not stop at borders. It will take networks of nations to respond to global challenges, not nations working alone. And, to work with others, we must learn about them.

At the summit, when government officials talked about the need to recruit more international students, they often said these students could be educated about America and that they would become great ambassadors of goodwill for America. That’s an important point, but I didn’t hear anyone say that these students should be valued because of what they could teach us about their cultures. In the same manner, the language initiative was presented as a way for us to better explain America to others, rather than as a way to listen to the concerns of others.

Basing our efforts solely on the need to beat our competitors and defeat our enemies limits the possibilities for collaborating with other cultures to further our collective prosperity. Global education is the right thing to do because individuals will benefit, and, yes, because our nation will benefit, but most importantly because humanity will benefit. As Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “We seek victory — not over any nation or people — but over the ancient enemies of us all; victory over ignorance, poverty, disease and human degradation wherever they may be found.”

Creating a global education cannot be done on a national basis. The government needs to expand its focus to collaborate with other governments in this effort. And, educators must reach beyond the nation and forge links with international educators to provide an international dimension to our curriculum. We must, of course, discuss what we feel should be emphasized about our culture and our country, but we must also listen carefully to what other cultures want us to hear — and then we must work together to craft relevant lessons and expose students to global perspectives. Only by working beyond borders can we provide students opportunities to succeed beyond borders.