Fulbright scholars' visit ties into EPIIC's curriculum

Foreign Fulbright scholars in U.S. National Security Policy discussed America's role in the world with students on Friday in Tufts' EPIIC Colloquium.

The scholars were professors, journalists, researchers, politicians, and military leaders enrolled in the Fulbright American Studies Institute at the University of Delaware. For three weeks, the international students studying the U.S. visited universities, think tanks, and government organizations in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC.

For the EPIIC students, a casual lunch and discussion group on the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa offered exposure to a wide variety of international figures from Argentina to Mozambique to the West Bank. It also provided networking opportunities for the independent research key to the EPIIC program, as well as for internships. EPIIC director Sherman Teichman was confident that the event would provide the critical "continuity and depth of relationships [necessary for] research."

"It's amazingly interesting to see what their perceptions [of the U.S.] are," said senior EPIIC student Erica Levine, who is hoping to do research in Morocco.

The program arose from EPIIC's collaboration with Mark Miller, Director of the Fulbright American Studies Institute, who delivered an address at EPIIC's 1998 symposium. Impressed by EPIIC's format and curricula, Miller wrote an article in the International Migration Review deeming the program an "educational tour de force".

"What I saw accomplished at the symposium are what proponents of undergraduate educational reform dream about," Miller wrote in the article.

Miller hopes to use the EPIIC program as a model for undergraduate curricular reform at Delaware. "The students are prepared by diligence, thinking, and meeting with people to make their own way in the world" Teichman said.

EPIIC's theme this year focuses on America's Role in the World, with its aim to "to transcend an 'Ameri-centric' point of view," Teichman said. The parallel aims of each program as well as previous collaboration between Teichman and Miller, offered valuable opportunities for exchange.

The goal of the visits was to educate the scholars about the influences upon policy-making, mainly academia, think tanks, and the government itself. "We hope they leave here with a better understanding of the U.S. and of Americans, [and that it is] a mutually beneficial educational experience," Miller said.

"It's an opportunity to see from inside all of the things I've been reading about" scholar Georgios Michalakopoulos, who teaches Geopolitics at Greece's Ionian University, said. "We met those involved with foreign policy-making -- the writers of the books that I read back home. It's a major advantage to develop a personal view of the U.S. The image comes from movies, which don't reflect reality."

Slovenia's Gorazd Barto, who develops military education curricula, entered the program wanting to "understand the U.S. style of thinking" as a military and economic superpower. Having previously only visited military sites in Texas, Utah, and Colorado, Barto found there to be "a great difference between civil and military society. [Civil society is] much more open and mixed."