President's Remarks 2005
Keynote Address
Asian Chamber of Commerce
President David W. Leebron
April 8, 2005
Thank you for inviting Ping and me to this wonderful event. We have already met some of you and hope to make many more new friends among members of the Chamber and in the Asian community at large. I am honored to be here tonight.
When Rice first approached me a year ago September, and asked me to come down to Houston to talk to people, I told the chair of the search committee that I didn’t know much about Houston, but unless it had a significant Asian community, and in particular a Chinese community, the conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere.
And so began a learning process. It began, I suppose, with statistics. I learned that Houston has the 8th largest Asian population among American cities. Among the ten cities with the highest total population, Houston has the third highest percentage of Asians. I learned that 27% of our population here in Houston is foreign born. I learned that the port of Galveston in particular had served to create in Houston a vibrant immigrant community, not only a vibrant community of new immigrants, but deeply imbedded communities of immigrants descended from families who came here a century ago.
And once I moved here with Ping and our two children, we felt so welcomed by Houston, and in particular its Asian communities. We saw how those communities came together in the wake of the devastating tsunami, and we enjoyed in turn welcoming those communities for the first-ever Lunar New Year celebration held in the Rice President’s house. And we learned that Houston had the best Asian grocery stores we had ever been in – anywhere in the world.
This diversity, which Houston celebrates, is vital to our future. We are a dynamic and lively and engaging city precisely because we are a city of immigrants, whether from Bombay or from Brooklyn, from China or from Charleston. These diverse communities bring both culture and connection to our city. By culture, I mean the joy we experience from learning about another culture’s art, literature, customs, music and, perhaps most importantly, food. This enriches our daily lives, and enlightens us about the human experience.
By connection, I mean the ways in which Houston’s immigrant communities, and the individuals who comprise them, keep our great city connected to their home countries. This has, I think, been especially true of our Asian communities, perhaps because these communities are continuing to grow each day. Although it is not only Asians who can do business with Asia, Houston’s transnational commercial activity is more successful because of the availability of this local pool of talent to help foster and sustain relationships and local knowledge.
My world – the world of higher education – has played a central role in these relationships, and nowhere more importantly than with regard to Asia. In every year but the last, the number of foreign students in the United States has increased. According to fairly recent figures, seven of the top ten countries that send foreign students to study in the United States are in Asia. In fact, if you put aside our neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico, only one of those ten countries is not commonly thought of as being in Asia, although in fact the majority of the country is. (This is a quiz – I’ll tell you the answer later.)
Rice is typical in this regard. Our international student population has grown significantly. Less than twenty years ago, it was under 10% of our student body. That percentage is now 14% of an even larger student body. That is, one out of every 7 students at Rice is an international student. Among those students, just over half are from Asia. China and India are by far our largest, if you will, suppliers. After Canada, Korea is fourth, and certainly very well represented if one adjusts for population.
The presence of these students is supplemented by the 15% of our students who are Asian-American. The interests of Asian students at Rice span everything from Music to Management, from Engineering to English. They study languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Sanskrit and Tibetan. Last year we had over 30 undergraduate students travel to Asia to take advantage of work and study abroad opportunities. Our students have formed the South Asian Society, the Japanese Student Association, the Rice Taiwanese Association, the Vietnamese Student Association, the Chinese Student Association, the Korean Student Association, and Asian Pacific Americans for Social Action.
Through the research of our business school faculty, some of whom are Asian, we are learning about cross-cultural organizational behavior, as well as international joint ventures in multinational corporations in China, and high tech entrepreneurship across Asia.
In addition, the Asian Studies faculty at Rice has created fascinating interdisciplinary research groups. One group has studied the forgotten role of women authors and essayists in guiding reforms in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Another has explored the ways that transnational population migration has influenced Asian religious practices. At a recent conference, Rice brought to Houston authorities on religious pilgrimage from the UK, the US and China to examine how the erosion of national boundaries has influenced the practice of Asian religions. A third group has organized faculty and students from Anthropology, History, Linguistics and the Baker Institute for Public Policy’s Transnational China Project to explore how economic reforms in China are changing literature, film and advertising in the context of globalization. This exciting work helps explain why the number of Asian Studies majors at Rice has doubled over the last five years.
Since my arrival last July, I have emphasized as a top priority Rice’s engagement with Houston. We want our students to see Houston as perhaps one of the most important learning environments available to them while they are at Rice. To foster this, we have provided to all our undergraduate students a METRO U.Pass coupled with museum memberships and cultural information that together we call a “Passport to Houston.” It is in fact a Passport to an important part of their education.
This type of engagement is also focused on giving something back to our community. Through our Asia Outreach and Global Education Program Rice offers seminars on the complex historical interaction between China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. We are particularly proud of our efforts to train local elementary and secondary school teachers across the city in Asian culture and languages.
All of the news, however, is not good. In the post-9/11 world, the United States has imposed substantial barriers and deterrents to foreign students and scholars. The result has been a very substantial decline over the last three years in the number of foreign applicants, and as I said previously, an actual decline in the number of enrolled students for the first time.
In a survey conducted last year of 480 American educational institutions 38% of them reported a decline in enrollment of new international undergraduate students. Many noticed decreased enrollment from Indian, Indonesian, and Pakistani applicants. The numbers related to graduate students are even starker. Nearly three-quarters of the institutions in this national survey reported a decline in enrollment of new graduate students, and the countries most affected included China, India, and Korea.
When we lose foreign students, we lose three times. We lose what they bring not merely in terms of cultural richness, but in the concrete contributions they make to our research endeavor. For those who would have studied here and returned to their home countries, we lose the influence that American values and way of life would have had on the future leaders of those countries. Some 70 Presidents or Prime Ministers, 105 ministers or cabinet secretaries, 14 Ambassadors to the United States, and 12 high-ranking United Nations officials have studied in our country as foreign students.
And for those who would have studied here and chosen to stay, we lose the contribution of very gifted people from all over the world who have through decade upon decade come to our shores to make America their home.
Where are these students going? Some are staying home, but many are choosing to go elsewhere. To give but one example, the United Kingdom recently reported for the 2004 academic year a 9% increase in foreign students, and a whopping 36% increase in the number of Chinese students. We also know that many more international students are applying to study in Canada and Australia. And these countries are encouraging them, by changing their educational policies to attract the very best foreign students. In the global marketplace for talent, the United States is falling behind.
We invite you to join us as advocates for international education. As many of you well know, the opportunity to study in this country enriches us – as individuals, as institutions, and as a great city. Thank you for all that you have done and continue to do to help our city lead in carving an enduring relationship with Asia. For our part, Rice welcomes your enthusiasm, support, and commitment as we work together.
Good evening.
