Opening Statement of Chairman Bill Delahunt

at a hearing of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight of the Committee on Foreign Affairs entitled:

Restoring America’s Leadership through Scholarships for Undergraduates from Developing Countries: The Uniting Students in America (USA) Proposal

June 19, 2008

The Subcommittee will come to order. This is a joint hearing of the Subcommittee with the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor. My friend and Ranking Member Mr. Rohrabacher and I thank Chairman Hinojosa and Ranking Member Keller for helping us coordinate the hearing.

Last week our Subcommittee held a hearing on a report we issued, entitled: The Decline in America’s Reputation: Why? Based on a series of ten hearings held by the Subcommittee with prominent pollsters, the report documented the dramatic decline in international approval for U.S. leadership -- from historic highs in 2002 to historic lows today.

For example, in Europe, the belief that U.S. leadership in world affairs is “undesirable” nearly doubled from 31 percent in 2002 to 57 percent by 2006. Similarly, in 2002, 83 percent of countries in a world wide sample had more people expressing favorable views rather than unfavorable views toward the United States -- by 2006, only 23 percent of countries sampled were more favorable than not.

Our unilateral use of military power in Iraq, and torture, abuse, and “rendition” in violation of our international treaty obligations have been deeply troubling to me, and clearly to citizens of other nations as well -- even in Turkey, a longstanding NATO ally, two-thirds of citizens have such a poor opinion of us that they have come to believe that the United States is likely to attack their country in a dispute.

This decline in our reputation should trouble us not because foreign policy is a popularity contest, but because, as the Government Accountability Office found in 2005, our low standing can damage our ability to conduct foreign policy in the national interest. As we heard from Dr. Esther Brimmer of the Center for Trans-Atlantic Relations in our hearing last week, on policies such as sending troops to Afghanistan, friendly governments may find their populations unwilling to endorse cooperation with the United States even on important shared objectives.

In short, it is in our own, crass self-interest to care what others think of our policies. The Subcommittee is now preparing a second report – to assess systematically the impact of the decline in our reputation on our national interests.

Today’s hearing is about a proposal to do something about the decline in America’s reputation, and to restore our ability to provide global leadership. It concerns a proposal for a “Uniting Students in America,” or USA, Scholarship program -- whose goal is bring 7,500 needy undergraduates from developing countries to American colleges every year to begin a four-year scholarship. Upon graduating, they would return, with their new skills, attitudes, and friendships, to their home countries .

During the series of hearings on our reputation, Chairman Don Payne of the Africa Subcommittee and I noticed that polls consistently showed that people from the developing world who had visited here and interacted with Americans as students, workers, or travelers, have favorable views about America that are ten percentage points higher than those who had never had that experience. And speaking for people who have run for office, a ten percentage point advantage can go a long way.

And, remarkably, that effect was expanded by “30 or 40 fold” to their extended family and friends, who simply heard the positive reports about how they were treated by average Americans. The effect was particularly striking, by the way, in Africa, where Professor Devra Moehler of Cornell University found that visitors and their relatives were five times more likely to express significantly higher favorability toward the United States.

So, Chairman Payne and I began asking the advice of some of our colleagues with expertise in higher education, such as Chairman George Miller of the Committee on Education and Labor, his Higher Education Subcommittee Chairman Rueben Hinojosa, and Congressman Bobby Scott, who has a continuing interest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), with three in his district, including 140-year old Hampton University. Title III and V colleges -- historically black colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other colleges focused on students who have been subject to discrimination -- have expertise in guiding minority and first-generation undergraduates through college successfully – expertise that would be quite relevant to the needs of low-income students from developing countries under the USA program.

Based on our discussions, Mr. Payne and I have drafted a concept memo that has been provided to the witnesses for their comments, and will be posted on our Subcommittee website for others to review. Our goal is to craft a legislative proposal before the end of this session of Congress.

While today’s witnesses are experts on education, from my vantage point this is a foreign policy initiative -- with a goal of strengthening our national security by establishing connections that last for a lifetime. This is a major program, with expenditures rising to a billion dollars a year – of course, to put it in perspective, that is about what we spend every three days on the war in Iraq which has contributed significantly in eroding our international standing.

At any one time, 30,000 USA scholars will be attending college in the United States – students from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who probably could otherwise not have afforded a college education at home. And even if they could have paid for college, they might have found it difficult to complete their studies, since colleges in developing countries are often hopelessly over-crowded and notorious for intermittent closures due to a lack of funding.

One of the world’s most respected pollsters is Dr. Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center. When Dr. Kohut was asked in our hearings about traditional public diplomacy, in which the United States spends money trying to tell our story, he said that these programs cannot “move the needle” of international opinion – for that, something real has to occur in policy. Well, we are proposing a billion dollars – because we want to move the needle -- with real students having the best experience that America has to offer – our colleges and universities.

Since under our proposal, the scholarships would be distributed according to population, tiny Malawi in southern Africa would receive 1.7 percent of the 1,800 scholarships awarded annually in sub-Saharan Africa – or 33 students every year. To have top Malawian students training throughout high school with hopes of being one of those 33 will make the United States known throughout Malawi as a giving, caring society.

The USA students will return to Malawi after college with their new skills, their sense of achievement and of possibility -- and the willingness to challenge conventional thinking and the can-do approach to solving problems that are promoted in American education, and are inherent in American culture. Malawi will be the richer, and the United States the more respected, for their successes in their careers. Like I said, this is about our crass self-interest – this is about being smart in our pursuit of our own security.

People who are concerned about our national security get it. Let me quote someone who may surprise my colleague Mr. Rohrabacher, because it is not Joseph Nye, or Zbigniew Brzezinski, or any other noted Democratic Party advocate of soft power. It is our colleague in the other body, Senator McCain, the presidential hopeful for Mr. Rohrabacher’s party: “In the struggle for the future of the Muslim world, scholarships will be more important than guided missiles.” Let me repeat that quote from this leading Republican: “In the struggle for the future of the Muslim world, scholarships will be more important than guided missiles.”

Of course, it would not be fair, and we always strive on this Subcommittee to be fair, to quote one presidential candidate without quoting the other: Here is what Senator Obama has to say about our USA proposal:

“By expanding opportunities for foreign students to study at our world-class universities, we are not only promoting international dialogue and cooperation; we are also providing our own students with the exchanges they will need to compete in an increasingly global 21^st century.  It is in our national interest to use one of America’s greatest assets, our universities, to build a global future that is marked by good will, not hate, and by understanding, not skepticism. I commend Subcommittee Chairman Delahunt for his efforts to strengthen American leadership by providing opportunities for international students to learn and share valuable global perspectives.”

And when our former Chairman, Lee Hamilton, met with Members of this House for a discussion of national security last week, here is what he had to say when asked about what policy initiatives the United States must undertake in the Middle East: “I would expand hugely our scholarships, hugely.”

So, as we get into the details today about how to make this program work, I urge the Members of the Subcommittees to remember that this is not just an investment in our colleges and in the economic development of other countries – but also an investment in our own national security.

I now call on Mr. Rohrabacher for his opening remarks, before turning to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Higher Education Subcommittee.

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Let me now introduce today’s witnesses. Each brings a special expertise to their ability to discuss the important and the practicalities of the USA proposal. Their extensive biographies are available in the Members’ packets, so let me just summarize their background as I introduce them.

George Scott is the director of the Education Team at the Government Accountability Office, which has conducted a study for the Subcommittee on current government-funded undergraduate scholarships for international students – of which there turn out to be virtually none.

Dr. William DeLauder is the former president of Delaware State University, an HBCU, and is now the counselor to the president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. He serves on the Board for International Agricultural Development, which advises the Agency for International Development, and on the international education panel of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Education, which represents 118 historically black colleges and universities. He also has a strong background and interest in African higher education.

Ms. Rachel Ochako is a scholarship student from Kenya, who attends Middlebury College through the Davis United World College program. Since I am on the board of trustees at Middlebury, I must give fair warning to the other members that I expect nothing but nice questions for Ms. Ochako, whose achievements fill me with admiration and hope.

Philip Clay is the Director of International Admissions and Services at the University of Texas - Pan American, a Hispanic-Serving Institution. In that capacity, he has developed a wealth of expertise in guiding Americans as well as international students through the college experience.

David North is a longstanding analyst of immigration policy who has done studies for a variety of U.S. agencies, and is the author of a book entitled: Soothing the Establishment: The Impact of Foreign-born Scientists and Engineers on America.

And Dr. Philip Geier is the executive director of the Davis scholarship program. He has been our close consultant as we have prepared this proposal. Phil has spent his entire career in international education, and we are grateful to him for all the time and effort he put into helping us with the concept memo.

George, let us begin with you, and let me ask all of you to limit your remarks to five to ten minutes so that we have a good amount of time for a general discussion of the USA scholarship proposal.

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