Coincidently, before beginning my travels in the summer of 2006, I read Joseph S. Nye’s Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, which highlighted the resounding success of humanitarian aid pro- grams coupled with educational exchange when compared to war and occupation. Nye’s main idea was for Americans to win the hearts and
minds of countries that would otherwise be hostile to us by sending our students there, building schools, and funding hospitals (1). When we lift people up, they are more willing to support the United States. When we send troops in, they become the occupiers. They are often the faces blamed for civilian casualties, as we see today in Iraq, and the people of the occupied countries grow to hate Americanism. I decided right before the UNF honors study abroad trip to Southeast Asia to try to notice soft power in action and see if there was any validity in Nye’s claim. Nye’s work is decidedly Ameri-centric, and although I think that the goal should be to help all involved nations, I find Nye’s focus use- ful when discussing these issues with people who are inclined to be more exclusively concerned with American interests.
Just as Americans look to Islam with a variety of opinions both flawed and not, the same can be said concerning how Muslims view America. Bernard Lewis, arguably the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East, discusses in The Crisis of Islam the views that many people in Muslim countries share in regard to the United States. He focuses first on the fact that most Islamic countries are facing extreme poverty and explores the impact of the media and the resulting con- sciousness of socio-economic divisions that occur between the West and the Muslim world. He argues, “Today thanks to modern media and communications, even the poorest and most ignorant are aware of the differences between themselves and others, alike at the personal, famil- ial, local, and societal levels” (117).
Lewis finds that hostilities between many in the Muslim world result from American paramountcy in that people in poor Islamic countries see how wealthy America is and feel wronged because the U.S. supports many autocratic regimes that oppress their own citizens, and America does not seem to care about the situation in which Muslims find them- selves (1–49). Thomas L. Friedman addresses this idea in Longitudes and
Attitudes, a collection of his biweekly columns on foreign affairs that appeared in The New York Times in the weeks leading up to 9/11 and the months that followed. In a 2002 column, “Better Late Than . . . ,” Friedman makes the following observation: “Since September 11, the Bush team has focused on making the world safer but has shown little interest in making it more healthy, less poor, and more environmentally sound. As a result, there has been little chance that it was going to end up safer for Americans” (qtd. in Longitudes 140–41).
If more students are sent to Islamic countries and we receive foreign students, resentment on both ends could decrease with human-to- human exposure. Of course, there is always the issue of unintended
blowback from study abroad programs, such as a student acting boor- ishly, ignoring cultural norms, and acting disrespectfully to people in the host country. If a student, however, decides to participate in an aca- demic learning experience overseas, making the arrangements in terms of costs and logistics is a time-consuming task that requires dedi- cation. Investment in the format, structure, and norms of an academic study abroad must be present from the beginning stages of a student’s decision to participate, all of which can reduce the likelihood of disre- spectful behavior. Further, if the boor is the exception rather than the rule, the impact of bad behavior is significantly diminished.
Recently, I asked a Moroccan student, who preferred to remain anonymous, what her broad impressions on America and Americans were. She remarked that in her estimation the majority of Americans pay little attention to what is going on in the world since their lives are relatively rich and fulfilled. She also noted, however, that upon return- ing home she will miss the freedoms, including the opportunity to work, that are available to women in the U.S. Because of these oppor- tunities, she hopes to move back to the U.S. permanently and raise a family here despite the fact that she never would have thought of mak- ing this choice previously. Studying in the U.S. improved this student’s view of America enough for her to want to relocate. To me, her changed attitude offers living proof of the success of such programs.
It must be remembered, of course, that simple exposure to another culture does not guarantee mutual understanding. People who carry a particular ideology to such experiences are more likely to have cross- cultural experiences reify their prejudice. The case of Sayyid Qutb illus- trates this caveat profoundly. Qutb, who is recognized as the intellectu- al father of modern Islamic radicalism, came to the U.S. to study in Greely, Colorado, for one year. Based on his experience and what he saw in Greely in 1949, he wrote about the moral decrepitude of America. Former students attending the same college recalled ruefully in a National Public Radio interview that they must have missed the church dances Qutb described so deprecatingly (“Sayyid Qutb’s”).