Latitudes

“I am where I am today because of international education”

International educational is the midst of enormous, perhaps generational, change. Covid-19 challenged those who work in the field, and technological shifts, geopolitics, and global competition have only added to the pressures.

But it’s precisely the difficulty of navigating through uncertainty that attracted Fanta Aw, who earlier this year was named executive director and chief executive of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. “I sensed that international education was going through its own transformation,” Aw said. “For me, it was really an opportunity that presented itself: How can we figure out where to go next?”

In taking the helm at NAFSA, Aw left American University, which had been her personal and professional home for years, She first came to the Washington, D.C., institution as an international student, from Mali, in Africa, and rose through the administrative ranks, becoming the university’s vice president for undergraduate enrollment, campus life, and inclusive excellence.

On the eve of NAFSA’s 75th annual conference, Aw sat down for an extended interview with Latitudes. “What I’m looking most forward to is the energy,” Aw said of the gathering, which runs until Friday. “There is renewal that’s happening in the field.”

The interview has been edited for space and clarity.

You made your career at American. Why did you decide to take the NAFSA position?

I had the opportunity to engage in substantive work over three decades at American, and I’m grateful for that. But this was an opportunity to come back. It’s coming home for me. As an international student, international ed has always been part of my journey. It’s always been part of my story, both on a professional and a personal level.

I saw that with everything that was happening with Covid, our field was changing quite rapidly. I thought, I want to be part of figuring out where we go next and not be a bystander to it.

How do you think international education is changing?

One is, the world is not waiting for the United States. The truth of it is, the world has not been waiting for the United States for quite a while. There is no doubt that with 2016, that was a step back for us. Understanding how important it is for the United States to re-engage with the world — I’ve always said international education is a way forward for doing that. There is no substitute for people-to-people exchange. There is no substitute for understanding how one is situated in the larger world than through the lens of education or research or work abroad. For the field we are in, this is a prime opportunity.

That’s interesting framing. You’re talking about international education as an actor shaping how the United States engages globally. How can international education reassert American engagement in the world?

There have been generations of students who have been the beneficiaries of international education. We truly have ambassadors everywhere. In a time that there is so much polarization and where we have so many challenges — climate change, migration issues, food insecurity, threats to democracy — we have an incredible reservoir of goodwill. So part of our invitation as a field is to re-engage with those stakeholders.

I was at American for 30 years. If I was to size up every student I had the great fortune of working with and multiply that by the number of [international-education] practitioners, you begin to see the power of potential change that can bring. This is beyond hopeful thinking. These are folks who are really doing a lot of interesting work, groundbreaking work. And they will tell you, time and time again, it’s because they had the privilege and the opportunity to engage in international education. The way they see the world as a result speaks volumes about why the work matters.

What can international educators do?

I say to each and every one of our practitioners: You are on your campuses, and you know the stakeholders. It’s about engaging them. And, frankly, we need a structure, we need a national strategy.

The United States will be a better and a stronger partner to the world if it has a national strategy that allows American students to go in larger numbers overseas to really learn, explore, and engage with the world. In the same way, it would be in our best interest to have international students who study, who research, who work, who thrive here and who take that knowledge back.

What should that national strategy look like?

I think there is a lot of good work that has happened. The Department of Education and the State Department’s joint statement has been a signal. Our national strategy has to be about a coordinated, collaborative effort that brings all the key federal agencies together for engaging this work. Our call is to have the White House take the lead to bring all of these key agencies together.

We’re very specific on what the road map needs to look like. One, we’ve got to increase and diversify study abroad. How long have we been doing this work and how long have you seen the needle not move, in terms of the numbers? It requires greater funding. Because frankly speaking, one of our bigger challenges is with access. It’s really access that is limiting opportunity to students. We’ve got to democratize study abroad.

We’ve got to have a concerted effort and a consistent message about welcoming international students. It is everything from our visa process to the pathways post-graduation. For any student who has promise, who wishes to come and study in the United States, we must make that easier for them to do so.

Let me be clear, NAFSA has been advocating for a national strategy for a long time. This is not a new thing. What I’m bringing to the table is to push at this time. To say, if not now, when? When are we going to do this?

Taking advantage of a “perfect storm”

You began by talking about timing. How do you take advantage of the challenges to international education for the past few years to make change?

I think we have the perfect storm: Between some of the funding challenges our higher-ed sector really is facing, the demographic cliff we are seeing, the demands of our economy, geopolitics, and the massive global challenges we have — I can’t remember a time when all these things came at the same time. The pandemic, if it taught us nothing else, it’s that we’re not an island unto ourselves. Whether it was the vaccine or these other challenges, they require that we bring people together.

The question is, where does the United States wish to situate itself today? That is a choice we have to make. From where I sit, this is beyond rhetoric because we’re seeing the price of disengagement. Even some of the domestic issues we’re confronting now, for example, the assault on [diversity, equity, and inclusion], there is an opportunity for us in international education and those in DEI to really align ourselves.

These two areas have historically existed in silos on college campuses. Do you think there’s opportunity for real collaboration?

You could map the international agenda and what was needed and you could map the DEI agenda, and you could see how much overlap there is. If we can pool our resources, understanding that we have a shared mission, I believe we have a better chance of moving things forward.

For every generation, the way change happens is when that generation demands change. I have worked with students on a campus and I can assure you, they have been demanding change. On most of our campuses, students are not going to accept just the status quo. And it’s precisely because we have a generation that’s pushing for change, if we were to open the doors of access and afford more students the opportunity, we could see more students wanting to go abroad.

This is my personal bias, but if we can invest a significant amount in defense, surely, it would be a drop in the bucket to invest in education of this nature. I think anyone who believes in the value of education would not doubt that return on investment.

Let me ask you about the issue of change for those who work in international education: How is the field itself shifting?

We should be ready and willing to accept the fact that the field will change. Five or 10 years from now, what new domain of knowledge or areas will emerge in international education that we have not yet imagined? Because it will happen. And I think that’s actually healthy for our field.

I anticipate for the generation coming, they’re going to migrate from one area to another. A person may start in education abroad and then they are going to go do something else. How do we ensure this generation can be nimble? It’s in our interest to create those opportunities for them, rather than us losing that talent to other fields.

On the flip side we are seeing more people retiring, and the field lost many educators during the pandemic. Are you worried about the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise?

The challenge we have is how do we onboard folks who are entering the field fast enough. This is why you have organizations like NAFSA that are there for practitioners. The question is, what does 10 years of experience afford you? What are the skill sets and knowledge that you need to have? We need to find innovative, out-of-the-box ways about how we onboard and train folks who will not have 10 years or 15 years to learn on the job. I don’t know if you want to call them boot camps, but we will have our version of it.

How does your own experience as a former international student shape your work?

I am where I am today precisely because of international education. The education I was afforded has allowed me to see the world in a very different way. When I look at a map, it is not just a map. It is about people, it is about cultures that I have been introduced to. It is about lifelong relationships that have been built. At minimum, it humanizes us.

What that education has allowed me to do is to be able to have agency and free will in a way that I wouldn’t otherwise. That’s not something I take for granted. Honestly, there is nothing unique about me. It’s just that I was given a unique opportunity.

Professor arrested for China ties can sue the FBI

A Temple University physicist who was falsely accused of selling scientific secrets to China will be allowed to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A federal appeals court ruled that Xi Xiaoxing could move forward with his case in which he accuses the U.S. government of wrongful prosecution and violating his family’s constitutional rights by engaging in unlawful search, seizure, and surveillance.

Xi was arrested in 2015, at gunpoint and in front of his family, on fraud charges related to economic espionage. The government dropped its case a few months later after the professor’s colleagues came forward to show how authorities had misunderstood the science underlying his case.

Although Xi’s case precedes the China Initiative — the federal investigation of academic ties to China that began under President Donald J. Trump — many saw it as a harbinger of increased government scrutiny of Chinese American scientists and of research collaboration with China. In his lawsuit, Xi, who was born in China and is a naturalized American citizen, claims that his arrest was discriminatory and that he was singled out because of his ethnicity.

The appeals-court decision allows Xi to continue his lawsuit, which he initially filed in 2017 in district court.

In an email, Xi said he was pleased that the lawsuit could move forward. “What’s important is that we are now entitled to make the government answer under oath for their actions,” he wrote.

You can read my original feature on Xi and his case here.

Around the globe

The U.S. Department of State will postpone the effective date of new consular fees to June 17 because of a delay in sending paperwork detailing the new rule to the Senate.

In a letter published in Science, Asian American groups urge the U.S. government to move away from research-security policies like the China Initiative that are based on “deterrence and fear.”

State senators in Massachusetts voted to allow students without legal documentation who graduated from high schools in the state to qualify for lower tuition rates. The House must still approve the measure.

More than 14,000 people have signed a letter protesting a new law in Mexico that increases government authority over scientific research.

Students at a Belgian university were found guilty in the hazing death of an undergraduate student who collapsed after being forced to drink alcohol and fish oil and sit in freezing water.

Israeli university leaders are criticizing proposed legislation that would ban the waving of the Palestinian flag, warning that it could spark new academic boycotts of the country’s higher-ed institutions.

A Russian scientist has been accused of passing secrets to China.

China’s strict new data-privacy regulations could discourage international research collaborations.

A woman who had been studying in Japan was arrested when she returned home to Hong Kong for online posts she had made in support of the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations.

A leaked government report says that some criminal groups were abusing student-visa laws to illegally bring sex workers and others to Australia.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was the surprise speaker at the Johns Hopkins University’s commencement ceremony, talking with the students over a live stream.

NAFSA announced at the start of its annual meeting that the organization had signed the Climate Action Network for International Educators accord, a commitment to sustainability.

And finally …

The NAFSA conference is in full swing, but for those of you at the meeting here in D.C., it’s not too late to connect with Latitudes:

• Today, Wednesday, May 31, I’ll be moderating a session on the State of Student Recruitment in 2023. We’ll be meeting at 4:30 p.m. in Room 146AB.
  
• On Thursday, join me at noon in the NAFSA pavilion in the exhibit hall to talk about International Education and the Next Big Thing. I’ll be sharing my thoughts, taking audience questions, and hanging around for networking.

Whether you’re at the conference or not, you can keep up on NAFSA news by following me on social media. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn. The conference hashtag is #nafsa75.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.