Yale President Richard Levin has it right. In our apparent desire to vote for politicians who are not elitist and with whom voters could imagine enjoying a Sunday afternoon barbecue, we the people must also demand that these would-be leaders be learned, well read, and globally oriented. The stakes are just too high at this critical national moment to indulge excessive on-the-job training or accept narrow world views born of inexperience or even ignorance.
Levin is reshaping the Yale curriculum to require students to move beyond insularity and into the global marketplace of diverse ideas and peoples. He has also substantially increased the number of students from other nations in Yale's undergraduate population. He told The Financial Times (November 2, 2007) "A major motivation for this internationalism effort....is to combat the tremendous insularity of leaders in America." This is tough stuff coming from a Yale President, since it generates for him and the institution he leads the predictable, stereotyped criticism of being elitist and unrepresentative of the real America. This is self-defeating nonsense, however, that too often comes from the insular, narrow-minded thinking Levin is attacking.
The truth is that I do want my President to understand the general patterns of world history, know where nations are located on a map and have visited some of them, be comfortable with diverse peoples from varied cultures, and be familiar with how the military actually works. I recall a Kennedy School classroom years ago in which a hot-shot rising politician said in a detailed case-study discussion that he would land the AWACS on the nearby aircraft carrier. Sure, one can always learn that AWACS couldn't possibly land on carrier decks just as one can learn, Mr. Bush, that Greeks are not called Grecians and that there is a difference between Slovenia and Slovakia. However, wouldn't we be better served if on-the-job learning started at a more advanced state than this? So many of our contemporary foreign policy and national security issues are born of avoidable ignorance.
Levin is reshaping the Yale curriculum to require students to move beyond insularity and into the global marketplace of diverse ideas and peoples. He has also substantially increased the number of students from other nations in Yale's undergraduate population. He told The Financial Times (November 2, 2007) "A major motivation for this internationalism effort....is to combat the tremendous insularity of leaders in America." This is tough stuff coming from a Yale President, since it generates for him and the institution he leads the predictable, stereotyped criticism of being elitist and unrepresentative of the real America. This is self-defeating nonsense, however, that too often comes from the insular, narrow-minded thinking Levin is attacking.
The truth is that I do want my President to understand the general patterns of world history, know where nations are located on a map and have visited some of them, be comfortable with diverse peoples from varied cultures, and be familiar with how the military actually works. I recall a Kennedy School classroom years ago in which a hot-shot rising politician said in a detailed case-study discussion that he would land the AWACS on the nearby aircraft carrier. Sure, one can always learn that AWACS couldn't possibly land on carrier decks just as one can learn, Mr. Bush, that Greeks are not called Grecians and that there is a difference between Slovenia and Slovakia. However, wouldn't we be better served if on-the-job learning started at a more advanced state than this? So many of our contemporary foreign policy and national security issues are born of avoidable ignorance.