Sunday, July 06, 2025

Foreigners

Over my years of teaching at UC Berkeley, Stanford and SF State, there were many international students in my classes and they invariably added to the educational and social dynamics in multiple ways. Some struggled with speaking and comprehending English, but they just worked harder and longer to keep up with the native English speakers.

It probably helped that I had experience teaching overseas and was used to speaking slowly, enunciating words clearly, and monitoring student faces to ascertain whether they were following what I was saying or not.

In the end, it was a great pleasure to work with foreign students, who came from all over the world. In seminars, I always solicited their participation in the form of educating the American students about life in their countries. They added a lot.

So it pains me greatly that the Trump administration is using various ploys as an excuse to try to bar many of these students from returning to their colleges here in the fall, and to deport the students who are already here. 

This is something Trump also tried to do in his first administration, when he used the specious arguments is that international students no longer qualified to attend universities that had switched to online instruction out of concerns over Covid-19.

That was pure BS, as I called it at the time and simply one more naked display of the shameful xenophobia that has marked his regime's entire time in power over two terms. It is deplorable. 

The officials who defend these exclusionist policies should be ashamed of themselves, but Trump’s is a cabinet without shame. They are directly violating this country's sacred promise enshrined by the Statue of Liberty.

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One life principle I learned a long time ago is that by making things more accessible to those with disabilities or differences, we all benefit collectively. An example is curb cuts. It is now possible for those in wheelchairs to navigate our sidewalks safely thanks to curb cuts, but also for parents pushing babies in strollers, kids learning to ride bikes, kids on skates, older folks with canes or walkers, and anyone else who just has difficulty picking up their feet a few inches when they reach a curb. 

That would include me.

By the same token, speaking the English language slowly, carefully and clearly is best for everybody, not just non-native speakers. In the Peace Corps, that is the way we had to speak it because none of our students knew more than a smattering of English words.

That formative experience for me in my early 20s turned me into a much better public speaker later on.

Besides speaking slowly, I learned to pause at the end of phrases, to give time for non-English listeners to absorb my meaning. Those pauses worked to allow the entire audience to absorb my meaning, actually; my words had much greater impact than would otherwise have been the case.

As I spoke more and more regularly before audiences here and around the world, increasing numbers of people came up to me afterward, clearly affected by the content of my speeches. But the content would have been the same regardless of the style of my speech. Had I not been influenced by my years teaching in Afghanistan, I would have delivered those speeches at a much more rapid pace, no doubt slurring words and using more slang that would have made it difficult for non-native speakers to process.

The equivalent to this principle in writing is to choose words carefully, seeking clarity and specificity. Using simpler words instead of technical or academic jargon, which only serves to exclude people. Plain speak, pure and simple, Direct from writer to reader. No filters.

Unlike Trump, I have no hidden agenda when I speak or write. I'm not going to use racist code words or try to manipulate anyone. Whether readers agree with me is not an issue. My role, as I see it, is to speak clearly about what I think and feel.

And about what I see.

I see a nation struggling to survive according to its first principles. We are persisting in our dreams under a tyrant.

All we can do is try. And I see growing numbers of people finally willing to try.

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