The World
A Message from the President
“We owe it to inspire our students…to recognize that they are not to act like inhabitants of a village, nor like beings of the hour, but like citizens of the world.”
Timothy Dwight the Elder described this obligation to our students when he was Yale’s President in 1831. The Yale Tomorrow campaign offers us the opportunity to make good on this promise.
We have been working on internationalization as long as any university in this country. Benjamin Silliman ventured abroad two hundred years ago to learn how to improve and expand the science curriculum for our students here in New Haven. And Yale has been a beacon for those from abroad for nearly as long: when the first Chinese young man ventured to study in the West, he came to Yale in 1850.
Educating Leaders for a global society
We now have the opportunity with this campaign to position Yale among the leading institutions in the world in terms of the international curriculum we provide, the overseas study and internship opportunities we offer our students, the support we give to our faculty, and the programs we initiate to bring global distinction to Yale.
We can be proud that Newsweek, in an August 2006 report on international education, placed Yale third among the "Top 100 Global Universities." But we cannot stop there. We owe it to our students—and the world—to become the truly global institution that is within our reach.
For Yale to pursue its historic mission of educating leaders in the world, we must develop additional curricula in global and regional affairs so that our students can equip themselves with the knowledge required of global citizens and leaders. We must provide undergraduates, as well as graduate and professional students, opportunities to work or study abroad to broaden their appreciation of cultural differences as well as the globalizing forces at work today. And we need to open our doors to a sufficient representation of international students and scholars, both to have a direct stake in educating the leaders of other nations and to give U.S. students the opportunity to develop personal ties across a range of national cultures.
Pursuing international research collaborations
The reduced costs of communication and reduced barriers to trade and investment have caused profound changes in the international division of labor and the location of production and service activities. The same forces provide an impetus to international scholarly collaboration, creating huge potential gains in research productivity. The Peking-Yale Joint Center for Plant Molecular Genetics and Agribiotechnology in Beijing and the Fudan-Yale Institute for Developmental Biology and Molecular Medicine Center in Shanghai are the first two notable examples. They will be followed by other international research collaborations that will benefit people around the world.
Other universities are responding to these same developments and are launching ambitious programs abroad. For example, Johns Hopkins is constructing a $19 million, 100,000-square-foot building at Nanjing University to house a joint program in international relations. Harvard has opened a research center in India. Some universities have far better support services for international students on U.S. campuses. Thus, one reason to pursue internationalization is to keep parity with, or move ahead of, other leading institutions with which we compete for students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty.
Setting the standard
But we are more ambitious. Yale in this decade can set the standard for a university in service to the world. It is encouraging that the success of some of Yale’s initiatives – such as the World Fellows Program, need-based aid for undergraduate international students, and the commitment to support all undergraduates in an experience abroad – are helping Yale to be perceived as an international leader. Recasting our mission in global terms and actively encouraging the international activities of students and faculty with strengthen Yale tomorrow. But we need your help.
A number of Yale’s most devoted graduates and friends are already committed to this effort. I hope you will help us ensure that Yale educates the leaders our world so desperately needs for the century ahead.
Richard C. Levin
