IN CASE all you ignorant activists out there haven't noticed, the administration sent out its strongest signal yet of its unflinching official commitment to curriculum internationalization at the University. Three weeks ago it assiduously pasted several TV screens onto an Alderman Library wall and called it the "International Media Wall." So take that, you curriculum internationalizers!
I would have laughed off the rhetoric as I did "Operation Shock and Awe" except for the sobering fact that a yearly subscription for that device is $20,000. But then again, you can't put a price on mute international football, can you? And besides, what could better epitomize diversity of perspective than many television screens with different channels?
Snickers aside, if the administration is truly trying to embrace curriculum internalization, then there are less lavish and more constructive ways of doing so. Despite the administration's recent 'progress' from denial to actually recognizing curriculum internationalization as a need at this University, its views on how best to bring about change are still stubbornly backward in orientation. More perversely, the changes that have been adopted are totally unrelated to the goal of curriculum internationalization itself and are characteristic of a broader administration strategy to substitute selective for substantive change.
The administration has remained steadfastly obstinate in its desire to enact change unilaterally at the expense of supporting its students. University Provost Arthur Garson was not even present at a Direct Action rally in the name of curriculum internationalization. Who can blame him? A hawk mauling a squirrel at the Amphitheater gladiator-style probably ranked higher on his suspense list. But this was not some isolated incident either. The same thing happened when the Ad-hoc Committee on Curriculum Internationalization's official report was released last fall by Ryan McElveen. Why does the administration refuse even to listen to student and faculty voices?
But it does, claims Garson. In an e-mail response, he dodged the question of the administration's absence and said that the Commission on the Future of the University has named internationalization one of "our top three priorities for the next ten years, and this work was accomplished with the work of over 100 students, faculty and staff." "I cannot imagine a more ringing endorsement," he added.
Wow, congratulations, sir! Students must thank you for vaguely referring to "internationalization" as an amorphous "goal" for the distant future, when nearly 75 percent of those surveyed by the Committee on Curriculum Internationalization were not "very satisfied" about the state of global education right this very instant. In addition, thank you for your important goals that speak broadly about "reviewing study abroad policies," "working to send more people abroad" and "increasing foreign students and faculty" and, most of all, "searching" for the new vice provost for international affairs. The hollowness of such empty rhetoric evokes, dare I say it, the goals of democratizing the Middle East and restoring morality in Washington. It will suffice to say that the record speaks for itself.
For the administration, rhetoric is the tactic and slow and/or selective change is the strategy. When Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) tried to acquire University public financial records to determine if we were funding genocide in Darfur, the administration led them first astray, then on a bureaucratic runaround, and then only a year later decided that business could not be done with genocide perpetrators. When the Living Wage Campaign requested a pay increase for University workers in the past, President Casteen announced a miniscule wage hike as a substitute for concerted change.
The same strategy is at play here. Rather than focus on specific measures demanded by students related to the University curriculum -- like more language classes in Chinese and Arabic -- the University has decided to focus on sending more students abroad. While study abroad is a part of curriculum internationalization, "study abroad" and "international public service programs" are not internationalization in and of themselves. It is depressing to have to stress that curriculum internationalization is primarily about, well, the curriculum. Unless the administration quits trying to play its devious "selective change" game, there will be a great disconnect between faculty and students. As Minority Rights Coalition co-president Patrick Lee put it, "until this fundamental disconnect is resolved, nothing will ever change."
The administration must shed its entrenched isolationist mindset and listen to students instead of reinterpreting initiatives to conform to its backward outlook. The first step should include extending an olive branch to a previously neglected student body by agreeing and assisting with Committee Chair Ryan McElveen's idea of setting up a student-faculty joint commission.
And of course, it wouldn't hurt if more students stepped forward to assume leadership instead of using sardonic comments as a rationalization for apathy. For condemning the elitism of a cause assumes a lack of popular mobilization, which ought to serve as a source of open criticism rather than a justification to hide under the cloak of sarcasm. But, then again, who am I kidding? Who cares about learning Chinese when you can watch the oh-so-many international TV screens at your cozy library?
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswaran@cavalierdaily.com
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