Latitudes

‘My role is to be a cheerleader’

When officials with the Biden administration asked Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee and the first woman to manage a U.S. presidential campaign (for Al Gore, in 2000), if she’d be interested in a political appointment, she had a ready answer: Name me to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Brazile, who has taught at Georgetown, Harvard, and Howard Universities and the University of Maryland at College Park, said she had seen the impact of the U.S. government’s flagship international-exchange program on her students’ lives. She was previously named to the Fulbright board in 2013, by President Barack Obama.

Brazile, who in December was elected chair by her fellow board members, wants more students and scholars to have the chance to study, research, or teach abroad through Fulbright. That’s a priority she shares with Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, who has pledged to expand opportunities for historically Black colleges and universities to take part in Fulbright and other international-education programs.

Fresh from a trip to visit a Fulbright program in Iceland, Brazile sat down with Latitudes to talk about the importance of diversity in international exchanges, the value of education in public diplomacy, and why she likes to read Fulbright applications. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I imagine you could have your pick of appointments. Why Fulbright?

I’ve been a part-time professor now for 30 years. I went to Georgetown after we lost the 2000 race, and I started getting students in the School of Foreign Service requesting a letter of recommendation, not for grad school but to apply for the Fulbright. And I thought, Let me try to help them and help more students. That was my beginning. No sooner than Joe Biden was elected, Ron Klain [the White House chief of staff] said, Donna, what do you want? And I said, I want to get back on the Fulbright board.

My role is to be a cheerleader. I love it. It is perhaps one of the best things I do with my life.

How can Fulbright expand its outreach?

Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s do more. In March we went to California State University at Long Beach [a Hispanic-serving institution]. In addition to having our regular board meeting, we held a town-hall meeting with alumni and graduate students and others. We want to reach out to more Hispanic students. Likewise, we are going to do an HBCU program this fall on a campus.

Why prioritize more inclusiveness?

We want our program to reflect the great diversity and talent of this remarkable nation. When I was a student at LSU [Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge], I wasn’t aware of this program. I want to make sure that students who are attending public colleges and universities, especially in my native South, are aware of this program. I want to make sure that HBCU students, Hispanic students, Asian American students are aware of this program. This is about ensuring that every American student and scholar understands that they have an opportunity. I want to let students know that you don’t have to have a certain credential from, you know, an Ivy League school.

What’s the value of participating in Fulbright?

It is about understanding, learning mutual respect. But it is also part of our foreign policy. I want to be more competitive, especially as it relates to China. Everywhere I go — whether traveling in Africa, as I did last year, or in Europe this year — there’s no question that China has been very aggressive in expanding their educational programs. So I’m glad to see that, coming out of Covid, the United States is out there, engaging in all of these wonderful initiatives with other countries. It benefits not just the United States but our allies and our position in the world.

You mentioned foreign policy. Why does it matter that the Fulbright program looks like America and reflects that diversity to the world?

This is the United States of America, and we want to provide opportunities for everybody. That’s the blessing of this program. And I think that is the vision that Senator Fulbright had, to have this program as a way for mutual understanding and mutual respect, and to provide a generation of Americans with the ability to learn other cultures and to have students come here and understand our process. To be a Fulbrighter is to be part of a great tradition.

How have you been prioritizing outreach to minority-serving institutions?

The Thurgood Marshall Fund is one of our partners. I’ve been talking to colleagues at Southern University and Grambling State University, in my home state of Louisiana, and to people at Coppin State, at Morgan State, at UDC [University of the District of Columbia]. I consider myself to be an ambassador for this program, to help expand it and work with our existing partners. But I’m also trying to identify former alumni of the program who can help with our outreach efforts.

You mentioned town halls. How will they, and other efforts, help get the word about Fulbright out?

A large number of students came up after the town hall in California and said, I want to learn more. We have what we call speed-dating. Board members sit at a table, and the students go around and talk to each and every board member about their experience and about the program, and we answer their questions about the application process. I loved it.

I have to tell you about one more application, from a young woman in Cameroon. She was the first in her village to complete her studies at the university there. And then she had applied to study here in engineering. Reading that application brought me to tears because it reminded me of what it was like growing up in the segregated Deep South, not knowing what opportunities lay ahead for me, but knowing that, because of my ability, I could make it if somebody gave me a chance or opportunity. And I gave her that opportunity, the Fulbright gave her that opportunity, the United States gave her the opportunity.

She’s coming to study here?

She’s coming in the fall.

This past year, I got a chance to meet some students from Latin America, and I remembered reading their applications. I just I love reading their stories. I tell my colleagues, if America knew how well regarded we are in this world, how people are so excited about coming here, learning about our culture, learning about our country. When I read those applications, I feel so good at the end of the day. I just burst with pride.

Here are recommendations for making Fulbright more accessible

Expanding diversity within Fulbright will also rely on efforts at the institutional level. I spoke with Donathan Brown, vice provost for faculty diversity at Northeastern University, about steps campuses can take to signal that Fulbright is inclusive, especially in its scholar program, which offers teaching and research grants for college faculty members and administrators. Here are a few of his suggestions:

Include a diverse group of Fulbright alumni in outreach efforts. “If you can see us, you can be us,” Brown said. Featuring faculty members with varied backgrounds in workshops, panels, and other forms of public engagement is an important signaling mechanism. They may also be better able to respond to concerns and potential barriers faced by certain groups of prospective applicants. “It can be something as simple as where you get African American hair-care products in Maribor, Slovenia,” said Brown, who was a Fulbrighter there in 2017.

Think about diversity in all forms, he said. For example, it could be powerful for single parents to hear from others who’ve successfully taken their children abroad.

Provide mentors. Brown has served an alumni ambassador for Fulbright for three years, giving presentations about his own experience and serving as a sounding board for applicants. One aspect he emphasizes in mentoring is the lasting impact of the international program on his own scholarly work — he recently won a research grant with former Slovenian colleagues to study discourse about race there and in the United States.

Put in place Fulbright-friendly policies. Colleges should have policies that enable a wide group of faculty members to apply for and take part in Fulbright. Tying Fulbright participation to sabbatical leave, for example, can exclude younger professors or those for whom sabbatical timing isn’t right, Brown said. I wrote in a previous newsletter about other strategies colleges have embraced to encourage Fulbright participation.

Are you a former Fulbrighter? What sorts of supports were critical to enable you to spend time abroad? Email me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. I plan to share reader insights in a future issue of Latitudes.

Congress warns of foreign influence on higher ed

Congress is signaling a get-tough attitude toward international academic and research partnerships, especially those with China.

The U.S. House passed a defense-policy bill laden with provisions restricting research ties with China. Congressional Republicans opened an investigation into a joint research institute, run by the University of California at Berkeley and a Chinese university, that they said could give China an economic, technological, and military advantage. During a hearing, the chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees higher education accused college leaders of being influenced by foreign gifts and “choos[ing] to allow indoctrination on American campuses.”

And that was all in the past week.

The series of events was a reminder of how international academic ties, once seen as a way to foster global connections, have been drawn into a geopolitical storm between the United States and China.

In a letter to University of California officials, the leaders of the House education committee and a congressional select committee on China requested extensive information about the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzen Institute, a research partnership established in 2014 between Berkeley, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese city of Shenzen.

The letter said the partnership raises “grave research-security concerns,” among them that some of its research areas reflect the Chinese government’s scientific and military priorities and could be used for intelligence or security purposes. The congressional leaders also questioned whether Berkeley had properly disclosed Chinese funding to the federal government. They asked the university to provide multiple documents detailing funding, contracts, and compliance with the U.S. government’s research-security rules.

In a written statement, Berkeley officials said they would respond to the congressional inquiry. The university “takes concerns about national security very seriously, and we are committed to transparency and comprehensive compliance with rules, laws, and regulations that govern international academic engagement,” the statement says.

The statement also notes that all research Berkeley does is fundamental and publicly available. Higher-education leaders have tried to distinguish between academe’s open research partnerships and scientific secrets sought by foreign governments.

The Berkeley investigation is the second in as many months of a college by the special China committee. In June, Alfred University, a private college in New York, said it would shut down its Confucius Institute after it came under political fire for hosting a Chinese-funded language and cultural center while receiving U.S. Department of Defense research grants.

Meanwhile, Republican members of the House higher-education subcommittee warned colleges that they needed to be more transparent about contracts, gifts, and other funds they receive from foreign sources, citing a 2019 Senate report on Confucius Institutes that found that 70 percent of colleges failed to comply with federal disclosure requirements.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah, said foreign governments, and in particular China, “pay for influence in our universities.”

“China and other foreign adversaries are determined to undermine America’s national interests and infect our political discourse,” Owens said, in opening the hearing. “The modern battleground now includes college, university campuses, and our students’ young minds.”

The U.S. Department of Education, which collects foreign-gifts data, has said it is improving the system for reporting. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, the committee’s top Democrat, said colleges needed clearer guidance to comply effectively with federal regulations. Republicans, she said, had “overemphasized enforcement.”

Democratic representatives also took issue with the tone of the hearing, warning that the rhetoric could fuel anti-Asian sentiment. One witness, John C. Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said that Washington’s mistrust of academic ties with China — which led, under the Trump administration, to the China Initiative, an investigation into academic and economic espionage by China — could have a chilling effect on science and on Chinese American scientists. Researchers of Asian descent are “scared to speak up because they feel like they are being targeted,” he said.

And the House passed a defense-authorization bill that would impose new restrictions on foreign research collaborations, among them: prohibiting defense funding from going to universities that have partnerships focused on basic research with institutions believed to have ties to the Chinese military; blocking defense grants to any “entity that maintains a contract” with an academic institution in China, Russia, or other countries of concern; and requiring stricter new disclosure requirements, including of past foreign collaborations, by researchers applying for government grants.

The must-pass defense bill has previously been a vehicle for Congress to approve research-security requirements. The Senate, however, still must pass its own version of the legislation, which might not include the House’s restrictions.

Around the globe

Legislation to increase and diversify participation in study abroad has once again been introduced in Congress.

Even when state policies permit undocumented students to qualify for lower residential tuition rates, the paperwork burdens of applying for those benefits can still be high, researchers found.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the University of Maryland-Baltimore County by Chinese activists who wanted to be allowed to protest on campus. The activists, who are opposed to the Chinese Communist Party, had been accused of publishing a student’s personal information without permission.

The British government plans to force universities to cap the number of “low value” degrees they offer, based on factors like the share of students who drop out or how many graduates go on to get a professional job, enter postgraduate study, or start a business.

Sudan is considering emergency measures to shift courses online or resume classes in safe regions as armed clashes continue.

A study by the World Bank and other organizations found a mismatch between vocational training in many low- and middle-income countries and their labor-market needs.

China has been using vocational education as part of its soft-diplomacy efforts in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Youth unemployment in China hit yet another all-time high.

Canada is offering a new work permit to woo holders of H-1B skilled-worker visas fed up with the American immigration system. It’s already maxed out.

And finally …

“I felt as if I was deprived of a certain kind of oxygen that I’ve relied on for a long time,” Neysun Mahboubi, a legal scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Sinica podcast about returning to China for the first time since before Covid-19 struck. But even as the pandemic has receded, scholars of China and Russia have found it more difficult to do on-the-ground research for political reasons, both domestic and global.

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