Foreign Students and Tolerance

By Chris R. Glass and Larry A. Braskamp. Foreign Students and Tolerance - I - Essay on how colleges should respond to racism against international students.
Neo-racism toward international students, such as the recent incidents at Michigan State and Ohio State Universities, highlights the challenges higher education leaders face in creating a positive campus climate for international students. Many international students live in a parallel social world, shut off from friendships with American peers. When a neo-racist act occurs, international students – and all students, except for a few – look to campus administrators and faculty for ethical academic leadership. Even if no major incident has occurred, campus leaders are responsible for creating a positive climate for the burgeoning number of international students arriving at their institutions.
While there is no "one size fits all" approach, we offer for consideration three "educational encounters" that make a positive difference in the lives of international students. Our recommendations are primarily based on analysis of the results from the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI), a multi-university survey that examines the relationship between educational experiences and global learning of over 70,000 U.S. undergraduates, including almost 3,000 international students. We are both involved in this research project. Drawing on key findings from our research, we propose three educational encounters that campus leaders may consider to create more inclusive campus climates for international students. More...
By Zack Ritter. Foreign Students and Tolerance - II - Essay on deadling with racist ideas of international students
"Would you date someone who was African-American?" The interviewee quickly responded, "No, they will hurt me because they are so big and I don’t like their curly hair and big lips, it’s not my style. It may come from Western aesthetics of blond and white."
These were not the words of a white supremacist, nor those of an anti-immigration advocate, but of a 21-year-old Korean international college student. Her negative perceptions of African Americans were commonplace in my Ph.D. dissertation study of 44 Chinese, Japanese, and Korean international students’ experiences with cross-racial/ethnic interaction at University of California at Los Angeles. Upon reading Elizabeth Redden’s article in Inside Higher Ed, "I’m Not Racist, But," I was reminded how xenophobic and intolerant domestic students can be toward international students. More...