I hope you love this, like I did when I saw it.
May the future be orange!
I’ve heard professors at Berkeley talk about Europe and Asia; Germany and Japan are my Economics professor’s favorite ‘other countries’, but I have never heard anyone speak of internationalization. While that of course may simply be the result of the fact that I don’t get to speak enough people, I believe otherwise. It is my educated guess that (the concern for) internationalization is a very European idiosyncrasy.
This is not to say that American academics are unaware of the world outside of their country or of phenomena that we like to capture by the word ‘globalization’. What I’m saying is that their interest in these phenomena seems to be focused mainly on topics such as (economic) outsourcing and environmental issues, not on academic cooperation and mobility. Not because they do not care, but simply because they do not have to worry: America already attracts the most ambitious students and most highly regarded scholars.
While I find myself surprised, from time to time, when I hear people around me speak Norwegian / Farsi / Serbo-Croatian or Cantonese and while I’m still not used to the sight of 80 Asians in my (Economics) class of 100, I seem to be the only one who notices. Both for Berkeley students and professors, international diversity seems to be nothing novel. Furthermore, when the public relations office boasts “Berkeley’s rich diversity” or when the Chancellor declares Berkeley’s “mission to support diversity, equity and inclusion” (preferably when funding cuts are looming), they are referring to ethnic minorities within the U.S. rather than to foreign students and scholars.
For Dutch higher education, however, internationalization is still mainly unclaimed territory. While our students are increasingly spending a semester abroad and while our researchers are relatively successful in obtaining European research grants (we did great in the first round of the ERC Starting Grand competition) and even though we offer the highest number of English programmes in Europe (excluding the UK), we do a poor job of attracting foreign students: the percentage of foreign students of the total student population in the Netherlands is a mere 5.6% compared to the European average of 7.2% and top scores of 9.2% in Sweden and 11,5% in Germany (Nuffic, Mobility Key Figures 2007). A part of the explanation we will find in our strict immigration policies and relatively high tuition fees (especially for non-Europeans), a part we must perhaps look for in our academic culture.
I will conclude with my own experiences of studying abroad. What, I think, stands out is the ease by which I have settled here in Berkeley. Not through the help of some ‘internationalization’ agency or the warm guidance of a ‘foreign student councilor’, but simply because everyone seems to accept my presence as a natural fact. One of my clearest memories is that of a mother crying, long and intense, as she was struggling to say goodbye to her son, who was about to start his studies here at Berkeley. An American mother, I should add, of an American student. It was this sight which made me realize that I am not alone here. There are very few – very few – local students here; undergraduate and graduate students alike come to study at Berkeley from every corner of the country. And while a Dutch student at the University of Amsterdam might still spend most of his time with his Amersfoort friends, or even travel to Middelburg over the weekend to visit her parents (and do her laundry), there is no way a Berkeley student would still hang out with his friends in Wisconsin, Madison, Miami, Florida or New York City, New York. The logical consequence: it is less of a challenge to ‘build up a new life’ when everyone around you is doing the same thing.
I believe the opposite is true of the Netherlands. If my account holds ground, it explains the complexity of getting more international students to the Netherlands, for socio-cultural factors underlying our countries’ unattractiveness to foreign students are unlikely to have a quick and easy solution. Let this not lead to negativity. Just like it was the ambition and persistence of one professor at the University of Amsterdam that led to the start of an exchange with UC Berkeley’s Sociology department, the ambition and effort of good people, when well guided by their institutions, can bring us much more. Add to that the great examples (‘best practices’) that we find in our country’s Art Schools and let us conclude that ‘the future is bright’ indeed and, with some effort, it will be orange.
Sofa activism
Never been a great fan of Faithless, but then again I never really listened to their lyrics either. Well, I did today and I can't say that I didn't appreciate what I heard. While perhaps less relevant than when released in early 2004, to me this song still gives a fairly harsh but valid message. So hereunder you find the lyrics of the song that was playing on my iPod today: Mass Destruction. Above, the music video. Enjoy!
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My dad came into my room holding his hat,
I knew he was leaving,
He sat on my bed told me some facts. Son,
I have a duty, calling on me.
You and your sister - be brave my little soldier.
And don't forget all I told you.
You're the mister of the house now remember this,
And when you wake up in the morning give your momma a kiss.
Then I had to say goodbye,
In the morning woke momma with a kiss on each eyelid.
Even though I'm only a kid,
Certain things can't be hid.
Momma grabbed me,
Held me like I was made of gold,
But left her inner stories untold.
I said, momma it will be alright,
When daddy comes home, tonight.
Whether long range weapon or suicide bomber,
A wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction.
Whether the Soaraway Sun or BBC 1,
Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruct.
You could be Caucasian or a poor Asian,
Racism is a weapon of mass destruction.
Whether inflation or globalization,
Fear is a weapon of mass destruction.
Whether Halliburton, Enron or anyone,
Greed is a weapon of mass destruction.
We need to find courage, overcome,
Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction.
The skin under my chin is exploding again.
I'm getting stress from some other children,
I'm holding it in.
We're taking sides like a politician.
And if I get friction we get to fighting.
I'll defend my dad he's the best of all men,
and whatever he's doing he's doing the right thing.
It's frightening, but it makes me mad,
Why do all of these people seem to hate my dad?
And if that ain't enough now i get these spots.
I go to sleep every night with my stomache in knots.
And what's more, i can hear momma next door,
Explore the radio for reports of war.
And all we ever seem to do is hide the tears.
Seems like daddy's been gone for years.
But he was right, now i'm geared up for the fight,
and he would be proud of me.
If my daddy came home tonight.
My story stops here, lets be clear.
This scenario is happening everywhere.
And you ain't going to nirvana or far-vana,
you're coming right back here to live out your karma.
With even more drama than previously, seriously.
Just how many centuries have we been,
waiting for someone else to make us free?
And we refuse to see,
that people overseas suffer just like we:
Bad leadership and ego's unfettered and free,
Who feed on the people they're supposed to lead.
I don't need good people to pray and wait,
For the lord to make it all straight.
There's only now, do it right,
'Cos I don't want your daddy, leaving home tonight.
Election Day from up close
Yesterday I had the opportunity to experience the American Presidential Primary Elections from very close by. Very close, since one of the approx. 50 polling stations in Berkeley was located in my house. In the living room, to be exact. (If you look close, you can see the Alpha Chi Sigma mark on the porch steps and on banners in the living room.) Since the number of voters wasn’t that high, I had plenty of time to talk to the volunteers in charge of the polling process (‘poll workers’) and took a look for myself at the polling equipment and procedures. Of course I also did my part in maintaining order and efficiency (I brought them coffee) and when the polling station closed, I joined my housemates for long hours of watching voting outcomes on television. Let me share with you some of the peculiarities that I came across.
One of the first things I noticed at our polling station was the special box designated for ‘provisional’ votes. This box embodies a complicated set of regulations (barriers, if you ask me) for the polling process. First, voters have to register in order to be able to cast their vote [i]. This can be problematic since registration is state-based; therefore you have to vote in the state where you have been registered. While it might be just a minor inconvenience (for a large group of people; estimated around 20% of votes cast in California were sent in by mail), yesterday’s election showed another disadvantage of the system: time-lag. Voting by mail was opened weeks earlier than voting at the polling station. This had a great impact on California: 10% of Democratic votes were cast on John Edwards, a candidate who stepped out of the race days before Election Day.
Of course there are always people who forget to mail in their votes. Add to that the number of people who failed to show a valid identification at the polling station, the people who registered just before the deadline and those who for another reason did not show up on the list of eligible voters. In all those instances, people were allowed to vote, but their ballot was put in the provisional box. By estimation of the poll workers, about 50% of votes cast that day, disappeared in that box. I think I can easily state that, together with the great turnout, these regulations lay at the core of the problems that polling stations faced yesterday: on Stanford campus, there were huge lines of people waiting as the polling station ran out of ballots; we had people knocking on the door hours after ‘our station’ had been closed who thought to have finally found a place where they could vote; and of course it takes a lot of work to thoroughly check the great number of provisional votes.
Another thing that I didn’t know about before yesterday was that every state adds to the ballot a number of state-specific propositions for people to vote on. Effectively, together with picking their favorite presidential candidate, voting day featured several hundreds of referenda nationwide. In California these propositions concerned topics ranging from allowing native Americans to open new casino’s (56% voted YES) to reducing the funding of community colleges (58% voted NO).
A third peculiarity that I want to merely touch upon is the voting system’s decentralization. As we already saw in Iowa, there is – first – a distinction between states that have primaries and those that have caucuses. A second distinction is that between states which hold Democratic or Republican elections, or both. Then there are states with a winner-takes-all system and those without, states with binding elections and those without, states which allow for Democrats to vote for Republican candidates (and vice versa) and states who do not.
One last thing we should keep in mind: it’s not the total number of votes that count. What matters is the number of counties won. The number of counties won, determine the number of delegates that a candidate has ‘won’. I’ve put the word won between apostrophes, as only some of every state’s delegates will be voting for the candidate that the people voted for. A number of delegates – called superdelegates – have the opportunity to decide for themselves who to vote for. As these superdelegates make up approx. 20% of all delegates (796 out of a total of 4049), it is not an easy job to predict the outcome just yet [ii].
I can however, give you the results of the Democratic votes cast in our house. Barack Obama: 140; Hillary Rodham Clinton: 70 (and approx. another 200 unidentified votes in the provisional box). Altogether a 2-1 victory for Obama and a pretty accurate opposite of the state-wide results. I guess Berkeley is a little different...
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[i] Although I won’t go into it much further, it is important to know that registration excludes from voting all Americans who a) are in jail or serving parole (approx. 2.3% of the population and 10% of all young African-Americans men); b) in many states, that have been convicted and served time for specific felonies (an estimated total of 5.3 million potential voters); c) that have been found to be mentally incapable to vote by a court of law. See, for more information here and here.
[ii] For an extensive list, look here.
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