Vadim Elenev: I think internationalization, it’s a funny word because it’s so vague … you could define it to mean anything you want. In the very heart, I am not against hiring better faculty, against expanding course offerings and against doing anything like that — I think we would all be supportive of something like that. The biggest controversy that can come out of there is proposals I’ve heard of internationalization [like] the introduction of new programs, specifically those programs ending in the word “study.” Those, I believe, are [of] questionable academic values to the University, to a liberal arts education, to detract from other pursuits that … students engage in, that’s what really would be the way I would structure this conversation.

Ryan McElveen: Firstly, I don’t think it’s a secret how I feel about internationalization. I think we’ve made marginal progress over the past couple of years; I don’t think it’s going anywhere, personally. I’ve heard things to the contrary from the administration, but a lot of that has just been — it’s essentially just talk. A lot of it centers around the Commission on the Future [sic] report, and I think that’s more where I would hope we could spend some time talking … because I just feel like the administration side of discourse and the student discourse is very perpendicular. I don’t think students in general see the University heading in the same way that the administration hopes the University heads, and after all my experience with internationalization for good or for bad, I think there have been things that have cropped up in the community lately, especially related to service learning and programs on globalization and that kind of thing, that present theoretical problems on looking at globalization.

Reece Epstein: I think, to repeat what [Elenev] said, is to define what we mean by internationalization. Do we mean that they’re going to make new course requirements? Is it a matter of expanding faculty in certain areas, and if we are going to do that, then what are we giving up in order to do it, because it doesn’t come out of thin air — I know that my tuition is high enough — so I think we really have to define before we go further, OK, what … programs … we can sort of talk about, and then try and figure out what the costs/benefits are. Before we do any of that, I think [we need to] just sort of get an understanding of what we think the purpose of a liberal education is. The term has been kind of glossed the last 30 or 40 years to be something relevant to some New Deal ideology, but it really suits an idea of an education going back to classical Greece.

Patrick Lee: Like Ryan was saying, Ryan and I have gone through this before several times together, and I agree with Ryan for the most part that curriculum internationalization has been severely twisted by service learning projects by the University, and it is inherent because this Commission on the Future [sic] [report], and so I do wish to go with that more, to explore what exactly the administration is doing to twist what curriculum internationalization really is. The way I view curriculum internationalization that Ryan’s presented over the years has been more like fundamentally changing the curriculum at home at the University … while the University is going on the track that curriculum internationalization is sending our students abroad and ignoring the fact that most of the students at this University will never study abroad, and if they do, they’ll only study abroad for a semester in an area where they’ll predominately speak English. They won’t get that international experience that study abroad is supposed to be. I just find the whole curriculum internationalization to be more of a University versus student [situation].

Stephanie Dewolfe: For me, after hearing what everyone has to say, my own personal interpretation of curriculum internationalization is less rooted in sort of the ideas of … what’s a liberal arts education, what does it mean when we try to trace it back. For me, it’s more important to look at what students at this University want right now, and I think that when I talk about curriculum internationalization it’s about expanding the curriculum to represent student desires, student needs and what students have expressed what they want, so that’s my main focus. We’ve measured a significant student desire for courses that have more of an international focus, whether it’s more specific regional studies, whether it’s looking at globalization and global development and that phenomenon going on in the world. To follow on what you guys were saying, the administration right now, there’s this whole initiative for enhancing public service, and what Patrick said, sending students abroad. Before we focus on these things — public service to the world, public service to the community — how can we change what we have here to offer our students and make that beneficial before we start worrying about going from in out. Let’s focus on what we have here and how we can improve that through enhancing faculty, through enhancing the courses to meet student demands. I think that by increasing our representation of diversity among courses, diversity among course topics, interests and representing countries that are underrepresented, representing languages that are underrepresented, providing languages that students want to be speaking, I think that creates more appeal for the University to outside students and outside faculty who are considering being a part of this University. When I talk about curriculum internationalization, I think it’s directly related to how we’re perceived by the outside community and academia and our standards to which we stand in rankings to other universities, and if that’s something that we really value, I think it needs to be seriously considered.

Elenev: I think if you look at the differences, there is a desire of a whole lot of students for certain courses, I am wary though of having — we talk of Web 2.0 as user-generated content — I’m kind of wary of student-generated curricula, particularly because education is not about taking specific courses here and here, you can graduate and take a … class on that education, but … you’re not getting specific knowledge, they’re giving you a frame of mind, and that’s something that’s developed within disciplines, within departments, so while addressing concerns that professors have — which I know they have, and I know that a lot of professors agree with a lot of the efforts you guys have done — basing it on student interests is a bad idea. The second point there is this forced segregation we’re talking, segregating ideas into by their country of origin or by their language in which they were written. While it makes sense to teach Spanish in the Spanish department, French in the French department, Swahili in a department dedicated to that … languages are skills, gateways into something else. Once you have a language skill, to then learn, if there’s a great contribution to world culture, world literature, coming from a certain region of the world, it should be taught within a literature setting, within a literature department … Truth knows no cultural boundaries, so our pursuit of it, which is presumably what we’re trying to engage in in your report, certainly makes passing references to Jefferson — that should be done not through a cultural setting, and I would separate learning about regions from learning languages … Culture, that’s something that we should try to acquire, the truth that we should pursue … That should be done through areas of thought rather than areas of the world.

Dewolfe: Could you elaborate on that last bit?

Elenev: Areas of thought as in talking about, in anthropology, is a way to think about it.

Dewolfe: So basically your point is saying that culture and language should be separated in the way that they’re studied.

Elenev: Yes.

Dewolfe: I agree with you about what you were saying about students leading their own studies, I don’t think that it’s students’ responsibility to teach each other, with anything that reinforces my belief in the necessity for the administration to step in and enhance the curriculum, because I don’t think it’s the job of the students to have to teach each other, and I think that’s actually what’s going on right now. If you look at the CIO boom and the different things that CIOs are interested in, and you look at things like Alternative Spring Break, Global Development Organization — all these students wanting to go abroad and going abroad and going abroad with very limited knowledge of what they’re doing. Regardless of whether we connect it to education or not, there’s a huge student interest in the international world, and I think that because these students clearly are waiting for the curriculum to change, they’re going to go, they’re going to … do these service trips, they’re going to go do research in a setting they’re not necessarily familiar with. I think that the fact that they’re not equipped with the necessary tools, they’re not prepared for the cultures they’re entering, they’re not taught basic things like historical context, cultural climate, they’re not given necessarily the language tools to use, they’re already at a loss in that they’re not being prepared as adequately as they can be for the initiatives that they’re pursuing regardless. I think that if you look at the CIOs that we have, and how wide-ranging they are, and the international section and global development section, it’s the complete representation of the fact that these students are looking away from the curriculum because their interests aren’t being reflected there, so I don’t think that it’s the students’ job to form our curriculum or to say this is what course you need to teach. I should explain. I am calling upon the administration to take action and say look, provide an outlet in academia, in education, that is a legitimate, sustainable way of educating students about their interests. I don’t think that it’s my job to teach students; I don’t think that the CIOs should have to do that, which I do believe is something that’s been represented. I really think that our views of education are very different, and I think that there’s a slight Western bias on the way that you personally view as what’s legitimate and what’s not.

Epstein: You said that study abroad isn’t that good in the English language because you don’t really immerse yourself in the culture, right?

Lee: Yeah.

Epstein: Well, if we look at it that way, then having courses here, where we’re all learning our classes in English, it wouldn’t be any better. I think also that study abroad — I don’t know if you’ve seen European polling data or some sort of study — I think that you have to look at how satisfied people are, and I imagine they are pretty satisfied. I think that certain people, I mean to really get a historical potential and language context and the skills to go to a certain country requires enormous breadth and depth, and actually potentially being immersed in the culture for years, so I don’t know if necessarily it’s practicable to try and structure a curriculum for people around that, and also just the fact that people want to go to so many places I think refutes the possibility of our offering them proper courses … This also brings up a really important issue, breadth versus depth, because the second you’re taking your first breath, you’re inheriting a certain culture and history, a set of principles and values and traditions. We inherit the West, and so when you say to me I have a slight Western bias — and I’m not remotely ashamed of that, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I take a certain amount of pride in it — and I think that in the context, the purpose of education, a liberal education, is the ordering and integrating of knowledge for the human mind, for the ends of the human mind, so people can operate virtuously in a society that is free and yet ordered. So to me at least to have certain depth standard, and also, we keep bringing up what students want. I don’t know if there is a study on this, but I think if you cut a poll saying that do you think a course in “x, y and z” would be good for the University, a vast majority would say yes. If you put down do you think we should give up a class in the Classics department for a course in “x, y, z” or whatever, the answer changes drastically, and that’s of course because we’re looking at resources that are limited.

Lee: Just listening to everyone here, I think we’re pretty much all on the same page with the exception of a few points on the matter of resources, and if you look through the report that Ryan said what he believes curriculum internationalization is, other than the language piece that you spoke to, about how that department should be created or strengthened to make sure that certain languages are strengthened like Chinese, Japanese, that’s another thing. What he’s asking for is fundamentally if we’re going to expand these departments like anthropology, sociology, history, into these new areas, let’s keep in mind what are growing areas in need at the University, what are students asking for to an extent. If it’s what students are asking for, then this report just basically points out, here’s what they’re asking for. It’s not taking resources away from departments per se, it’s more if we’re going to expand, let’s expand in a way that meets what students want. Now, we’re going through this whole debate as why should students have an impact on the curriculum itself, it’s one of those things where if the students and faculty clash over what they want, there’s a fundamental disconnect, and it only makes U.Va. bad, it looks bad to the nation because our rankings hold it up, the ability to play into the idea of are students feeling satisfied form the education they’re getting. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the students that do want these international courses, they’re not satisfied with the education they’re getting. They’re getting a fine education, but are they really exploring the topics that they want to see explored? What this report essentially does is aggregates this underlying student tension with the faculty, with the curriculum and organizes it in a more coherent manner for faculty to use. I’ve been in meetings, Ryan’s been in meetings, I’m sure Stephanie’s been in meetings, where the faculty have — I have problems with this report, I’m not going to tell you I don’t have problems with the report, I do — but what the faculty is taking out of it is giving them some direction on what student input is, and the University has never done this type of survey before. So it’s one of those things that until it’s done, there wouldn’t have been any information, and the faculty and the University would have just been hiring on the basis of what strengths are they in. Have any of you guys been involved in faculty hires and how faculty is hired in departments? I have been involved, and I see the politics behind that, and one of the things is if you don’t have someone specifically saying, we need to expand this area in our department to meet this growing need, they’re not going to hire the guy, and so this report gives students that way to tell the faculty their needs. If you’re that one faculty member who wants this but doesn’t have a way to get that concrete information to present his case to the department that we should expand into this field of study, this is what this report does. I think ultimately this debate has been focused on attacking the merits of this, when we really shouldn’t be attacking the merits of this report but rather just talking about the merits about what our ideas of liberal education are, what Vadim said earlier about the questionable academic values of certain programs that end in “studies,” that’s where this debate should be focusing on more so than anything else because we’re all thinking the same thing, for the most part on this, but it’s that part where we disagree the most.

Elenev: I think Patrick, when we start talking about specifics, you’d be very hard pressed to get me to say we should not, if so many students want more courses in Chinese, no they should not have more courses in Chinese. The idea that you’re trying to make this claim is ridiculous, so perhaps we can move past that. The original reason where I became skeptical of a lot of the activities that I saw the internationalization movement undertaking, first of all the original name that you all were wise enough to change quickly, which featured the word “de-Westernization,” in 2006, I believe, when it first came out. There was a — I’m not sure, Ryan, if you still subscribe to this quote — but there was a quotation in The Cavalier Daily — correct me if I’m wrong — but [the quote was] “Our problem is because conservatives,” — conservatives was in brackets, I don’t know the word that you actually used — “are not taking these classes because they’re not coordinated with their viewpoints.” Since that I’ve seen a lot of the goals, whether the first one that you state or the ones farther down the list, as not just creating more opportunities but more compulsive requirements to internationalization and not just to allow students to pursue a different track — whether Reece and I believe in the merits of that track — but more toward taking students who don’t believe in the merits of the track you’re introducing and shifting them more in that direction and shifting the entire University more in that direction, so that is perhaps where this debate can get contentious.

McElveen: There are a couple points I would like to address. Just about people being attracted to the Western-centric basis of the curriculum that’s been prevalent since the 17, 1800s, I would just like to make it clear that I don’t think people at the University like that basis. I think there are a lot of students, myself being one of them, that follow what [History Associate] Prof. Brad Reed said at the direct action — I don’t know if you were there — Brad said that when it comes to classes in Western history, some people just don’t care, and I’m one of those people who just doesn’t care. I think that if you look at the [On the Future of Curriculum Internationalization at the University of Virginia] report, there’s also a lot of — particularly in minority communities — it’s not that they don’t care about the West, but they feel like their perspectives aren’t being addressed, and when you’re sticking to that Western-centric framework, you’re leaving out a lot of people in the process, and by doing so you’re making them not feel comfortable with the institution. Just from my own experience, which I can speak to best, I felt extremely marginalized at the University just in terms of my interest because every time the COD comes out, I found five courses that I would actually be interested in taking, and to get in to those requires some bribes or something along those lines, so that’s one thing. I know some of you guys have been heading in this direction about things that are programs of studies, and I think that’s where this debate should be going, whether these things should be included. I think mandating courses like the North American diversity requirement is definitely problematic. I agree that having students take mandatory classes is never a great thing. I think in terms of the North American diversity requirement, it’s essentially giving people a choice where people could take something along the lines of history of Catholicism in America, something that deals with a subjugated group, and I think there’s where we should be heading in the post-modern world. We need to find these subjugated populations and be able to actually find them in the curriculum.

Epstein: I think one thing that when talking about what students want is about their different majors, I believe the history department, in economics, in English literature … those aren’t topics to choose that would imply a certain desire for this internationalization. Also, as far as the respect the institution gets, you can look at Stanford and maybe Harvard and Yale could in some slight sense be considered more respectable, but they have a Western studies core curriculum for their liberal arts education, and as far as I know, I think the University of Chicago does also, and I can’t think of two places with higher reputations. I think the rankings are based on totally other criteria — we’re a public university, so we’re not going to have a student-faculty ration of 8:1, so I’m not sure if that’s part of it.

Lee: Can you just clarify that statement?

Epstein: Which part of it?

Lee: Just the point you’re trying to make.

Reece: One person brought up that if we don’t internationalize, the reception of our University will go down in the community, and so I’m saying, look at Stanford and U. Chicago, in that as far as major numbers are going down, we have this viewpoint that there’s an upswell of people who want internationalization, and I think that the people who are trying to do that are taking something from the numbers I mentioned, and they’re the dominant ones. As far as the poll questions go that we’re basing these on, I haven’t read the footnotes here but I wonder how people were selected for it.

Dewolfe: It was a random sample.

Epstein: What was the response to it?

Lee: It was run by the University’s [Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies].

Epstein: Do you know what the response rate was to it?

Lee: 52 percent.

Epstein: Also, a few questions are a little loaded politically, like there’s one about do you think we offer teachings on other-world perspectives.

Dewolfe: I guess in response to that, I would say that in my experience, economics, politics, history — those are the three areas we’re talking about — those are the actual students that this actually appeals to the most. I think that a lot, within politics, foreign affairs majors want their area studies to be expanded. There’s actually a statistic in [the report] that I think 30 percent or something of students who had declared area studies within their studies were forced to choose on based on lack of availability of what they actually wanted to study. I think there’s obvious relevance in area studies within all those departments because we’re no longer in a time where economics, politics — and history is a bit old because you study the history of various areas — but when it comes to economics and politics, these things aren’t isolated to the West or nationwide; these things affect other countries, and so I can understand the appeal in wanting to learn about various studies within both of those areas. I don’t think it’s a matter of don’t internationalize or do internationalize, I think it’s a matter of representing more underrepresented voices, representing more underrepresented people, giving students at this University who aren’t able to relate, like Ryan, who look at the COD and don’t find what they want to study … not taking from our excellent liberal arts education focus, not taking from our Western-based curriculum that you said compares to some of the best schools in the nation, that’s understandable. It’s not about deteriorating what’s here; it’s about adding and building and allowing that to make our students stronger. Someone made a point about the danger of forcing upon these requirements. That’s a very tricky argument because, of course, why would we force these students to take things they don’t want to take, but at the same time, is it not worthwhile for students to be able to experience something that’s outside of their perspective?

Elenev: By compulsion?

Dewolfe: No, well not necessarily by compulsion, just in general, is it not worthwhile for them to have the opportunity to broaden their perspective? When you talk to people who travel, in my personal relationships and my experience with the African Studies initiative, those people who have had the chance to look past the perspective that they’re normally [in] or look past the courses that they would have not thought to take have grown from that and gained from that, and when we talk about a young college graduate today venturing out to whatever profession or career path they want to be in, a broadened perspective is what’s going to allow them to do their jobs best. A broadened perspective that’s not limited, that’s not in a certain track, that’s going to make them more favorable, that’s going to strengthen them as future world citizens, future whatever they want to be, whatever discipline that they’re in. I don’t want this to be against the Western established curriculum. I don’t want this to be the West is bad and we want to internationalize. It’s not about that — it’s about seeing the value in enhancing this and broadening that for me.

Lee: Stanford, Chicago, all those schools you were listing earlier: I think the fundamental difference between those schools and, I know what you’re talking about, their Western core curriculum and it’s one of those things at those schools, they have the resources dedicated to, after you’re done with the core curriculum, to broaden, to expand like what else do you want. Stanford has one, Harvard has one of the leading Asian studies programs in the nation, so … after you’re done with the core curriculum, you do have the option to go out and expand and study what you want because they have the faculty and resources dedicated to that. At U.Va., those resources have never been put forward, and when this report and what this debate and what Ryan has been advocating, what we have been advocating for, is if we’re going to expand, let’s think about this strategically, it’s sort of like, we’re strong in these areas, let’s start gradually filling up these areas and getting the dedicated line of faculty there so that we do have resources there in the future to meet this need.

Epstein: I think that in response of what [Dewolfe] said, I don’t think the purpose of education is to be hired. … If you are going to be in international business, you are going to have some sort of system in your company that will teach you basic parts, so it’s not like we’re economically not enabling people. Then also the concept of a world citizen, I mean I don’t consider myself a world citizen, I consider myself an American citizen, and as far as I know, across the pond and elsewhere … I think we look out for ourselves, just because of human nature, and I think times in the past have been questionable in their results. Also talking about Stanford and Harvard having really great programs, well it costs $45,000 a year to go there for tuition if I’m not mistaken. We’re substantially less than that, so I keep going back to this research and saying OK, so unless we’re substantially increasing our tuition, and I don’t see how we’re going to be self-sacrificing other things that people already like a whole lot, and finally, the great value of having a common perspective or predisposition enables us to have a conversation more effectively because, for instance, if you look in this very group, there are two of us who have similar perspectives and three of us with a different set, and that in itself makes it hard to decide what premises are we going on to go forward with.

Lee: I want to reiterate this point again. The idea that what this proposal is going to find is going to harvest all these faculty from these departments is ridiculous in the sense that the University has already committed itself to expand the faculty by several hundred over the next 10 years, if you look at Commission on the Future [of the University report]. And so that’s the whole point, where are these hires going to, how are they being created. All these newfound resources aren’t being taken away from departments per se, but they’re being added to the resources, so it’s one of those things that — let’s plan this out strategically, let’s have students have input, let’s have faculty have input. I think that’s where our fundamental disconnect is right now, because in my opinion, the way you two are framing this argument, is sort of like curriculum internationalization will take all these lines from these other departments and hurt what our strong programs are right now. I believe we view it in a way where we’re going to add 300 — I think the number is 300 — on top of whatever we have right now, and let’s place those people strategically, let’s place those people right. And yes, we’re not Harvard, we’re not Stanford, we don’t have the money, the endowment to pay for these new programs — this is true — and so if we’re going to add all these new professors, let’s just place them in programs in ways where they can start developing these interdisciplinary programs that we all want to study these days. Look at [Political and Social Thought, Environmental Thought and Practice, Political Policy, Philosophy and Law] and the way the University is heading and the way the University is heading in development of the curriculum. It’s going to want an interdisciplinary approach where they do want to incorporate more global approaches. So they’re going to incorporate a more global approach to hiring new faculty, and let’s make sure those new global approaches, whatever their specializations are, let’s see if they line up with what the [On the Future of Curriculum Internationalization at the University of Virginia] report says, which is based on what the students want.

Elenev: I think there are two responses to that. The first one is purely practical — the response that [the problem is that] some of our programs are really good [and] we want to get the ones that aren’t … I think there’s more to taking the ones that are really good and making them even, even better, and that’s kind of the basic argument that can perhaps compare with the advantages of the Western ideal, and it is about comparative advantage. The University of Virginia is best at teaching about Virginia, then about the United States, then about the West, then about the rest of the world, just like by virtue of our vicinity to Washington, D.C., we’re better at teaching about government than we are about teaching finance because New York is 7.5 hours away and London is even farther. So your geographic placement, your cultural, ethnographic placement defines your strength, and David Ricardo was not the original, but he did make a fairly good argument for why we should maximize our strengths rather than level the playing field between our strengths and our weaknesses. I appreciate that some of you want to study other regions and are first and foremost interested in other regions in the world than you are in the West, and I would encourage you not just to spend a semester abroad, but to spend your education abroad, because I think if I was interested, let’s say, being interested in something in Europe, if I were remarkably interested in something like French politics, I would try to spend my educational career, maybe not undergraduate but definitely graduate and maybe live there, [to study at] Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and if I’m really interested in China, I would want to go study in Bejing, in Shanghai, whereas trying to learn whatever bits and pieces about China I can in a room in Cabell Hall. Even more so, there’s this implicit assumption that with professional — perhaps I haven’t made this clear earlier, and [Lee] kind of implied that I agreed with it — but we’re assuming that everyone should have all these possible choices. Let’s OK the choices, and everyone can pick what they want, and that’s a good thing, this openness, this diversity, is a good thing. Now I’m not saying … it’s not an assumption that should be implicit to our conversation here, because again, the traditional purpose of a university is a philosophical focus. We’re focusing to a certain idea, [and] you don’t have this freedom to choose, you don’t have this ability … this is how the Western university was born, and by introducing a lot of new programs, it’s not just it keeps everyone else as well off as they were and improves others, it damages the focus of the university, not just financially, but philosophically, and that’s not necessarily a non-issue, that perhaps is an issue, and it is a criticism that I’ve never felt that your side adequately add