Anne-Marie Slaughter talks about how to use the Internet for international networking.
Slaughter: So, right now, there are countless Chinese students who have gotten money from the government or think they’ve gotten money from the government or from other foundations who send e-mails to places like Princeton and Harvard and NYU and colleges all over the US and say, I want to come study with you, and, generally, we are not prepared. They are many, many, many, there are hundreds of millions of them and, you know, we are educating our own students. We do need to increase exchange programs, but I actually think we need a much bolder approach, and that should be one that really uses the web. The possibilities for video conferencing, for joint teaching, for holding conferences and seminars where we don’t actually have to go there or bring them here, but we are, in fact, engaging with Chinese across the country, not just in the big cities, is quite possible. Corporations do it all the time. We have not thought imaginatively about how we harness our educational institutions, but also our cultural institutions and our youth groups to actually reach out and make those connections, and maybe they start with the trip, but then they continue to, everything from chatrooms to video conferences to whatever the web can offer, which is a tremendous amount, and I think we need to engage them that way, and in social networking, in various ways.