IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that the government is presented with an opportunity to educate the nation, fortify national security, and enhance public diplomacy, and to do so with a simple program that can be administered with a tiny staff and implemented at bargain prices. Yet the establishment of a program to fund scholarships for undergraduates and graduate students to study foreign languages, particularly Arabic, represents just such an opportunity. And Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, who returned last week from the Middle East where she had been conducting a “listening tour” among Arabs is in an excellent position to seize the initiative.
Of course, Ambassador Hughes’s principal task, as the president noted at her September 9th swearing in ceremony at the State Department, is to explain to the world American aims and principles. And she will certainly have her hands full with this large and neglected responsibility. But the president also emphasized that he wanted Hughes in discharging her duties to work with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “to encourage Americans to learn about the languages and cultures of the broader Middle East.”
