The Bush administration on Thursday proposed spending US$114 million on educational programs to expand the teaching of Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and other languages typically not taught in public schools.
Speaking to more than 100 college and university presidents attending a two-day conference at the State Department, US President George W. Bush said the effort would play a critical role in national security and lead to US students' gaining a better understanding of foreign cultures.
"In order to convince people we care about them, we've got to understand their culture and show them we care about their culture," Bush said. "You know, when somebody comes to me and speaks Texan, I know they appreciate the Texas culture. When somebody takes time to figure out how to speak Arabic, it means they're interested in somebody else's culture."
The administration invited the presidents to discuss issues that affect US college students studying abroad, the number of whom has steadily increased each year, and foreign students attending US universities, whose numbers declined over the last two academic years after nearly five decades of steady gains.
While the conference agenda calls for discussion of visa requirements and how to compete in a global economy, Bush focused on the need to produce more students capable of speaking foreign languages as a key component of national security.
"We need intelligence officers who, when somebody says something in Arabic or Farsi or Urdu, know what they're talking about," he said.
Robert Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, said he was among college presidents in Washington last year discussing similar issues with the CIA. He said he left that meeting with the understanding that "their needs are desperate."
Birgeneau said that he appreciated the administration's efforts but, for university presidents, language training for the government is "not our central focus."
Bush said that the administration was "recalibrating the proper balance" between national security and the eagerness of universities to increase the number of foreign students, one of his few points that drew a hearty applause.
Many school officials blame a tightening of restrictions after the terrorist attacks of 2001 for driving away foreign students.
Nina Powell, the assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs, told reporters that the process had improved and that 97 percent of applicants now get visas "within a couple of days."
The administration's language proposal, known as the National Security Language Initiative, would create several new programs and build on others, including a Pentagon effort begun three years ago to increase the number of military personnel fluent in languages and familiar with customs in developing nations.
Barry Lowenkron, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said a few of the programs might include a commitment to work for the government or the military.
"But it's not like a draft," he said, adding, "We're not setting goals to have X number of people in Y years. The goal is to start building capacity."
He said that only 44 percent of US high school students are studying any foreign language.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS