Page images
PDF
EPUB

been committed for the program now under construction as of this date. There is no reason why other funds might not be made available for this purpose out of succeeding budgets. Under the present arrangement, there will be no other capital improvement money available.

Chairman HAYS. There is one other question I have, then I will yield to someone else. We talked, as you perhaps know, to students yesterday and in at least two cases it seemed to me these students didn't belong here at the moment. Maybe in 5 or 6 years they might, later on, when you have had a chance to develop. One was a student in judicial administration; the other-I don't recall his field, but he had been teaching, or whatever it was, for 7 years, and he felt the courses he was getting here were really repeating courses he already had. Now is there any program in a case like that, in order to avoid someone, so to speak, spinning their wheels, to sort them out and send them on someplace else where they might get the specialized training they need? I wouldn't know where to send someone in judicial administration. I have heard, since I came here, that New York University has such a program, but I didn't know about it before. It would seem to me, if you sent this chap to, say, our State university in Ohio, he probably wouldn't get what he wanted. It just wouldn't be the right place for him. This is no reflection on the University of Hawaii, but perhaps a reflection on the selection process by which he got here in the first place. Would someone like to comment on that?

STATEMENT OF MURRAY TURNBULL, ACTING CHANCELLOR, CENTER FOR CULTURAL AND TECHNICAL INTERCHANGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII

Mr. TURNBULL. I would be happy to, although this is part of a wide range of selection and screening processes and problems which I hope to go into a little later on in some detail for you. We do have some means of sending on those students who need complementary or supplemental training which we do not offer here, although we are trying to develop the Center primarily as an educational rather than an orientation institution. We do operate, incidentally, an orientation program every summer for Fulbright and State Department grantees. The difficulties are numerous in selection, some of them arising, of course, from the problems we had in making use of the existing selection and screening machinery abroad at the time this was set up. Admittedly, some of the students were encouraged to come by people abroad who had insufficient opportunity to learn from us the kinds of people we were seeking, and they were insufficiently aware of the program we had here. This means in certain cases we have to do our best after the fact to ameliorate the situation. Generally, we are trying to select, according to what we can offer, in the light of our overall objective of mutual understanding.

Chairman HAYS. I am sure that is the ideal situation, but you already have this fellow here now. Is your program flexible enough to do something about it, or are you going to keep him here 2 years and send him home dissatisfied? That's the thing that occurs to us?

Mr. TURNBULL. I believe our program is flexible enough to do a good bit about it. I doubt if we can do everything that any particular

student might want, but we have already sent on to the mainland several of our students and some of them for extensive periods of time. There are several there now who may be there for as much as a year, for example, on special programs. I would like to mention the problem that we are confronted with in the Center here, and I mean this in no way as a reflection on any of the students we have now. It is a common problem across the country and that is that in most of the Asian countries there are hundreds, thousands, of students who would dearly love to go abroad to study. They would very much like to come to the United States. These students, of course, seek out opportunities of this kind. In many cases they are so eager to come that they apply for almost any program in any institution, and this means in some cases they are qualified for, perhaps, two or three programs, and we will accept them for one program, and when they arrive, we discover they really wanted something in another department, and of course the student is unhappy. This is where we have to use some makeshift system of assisting the student as best we can. I agree the selection problem is the primary problem we have, and I have some information later on, on things we are doing to improve this and for programs for next year which I think will help this situation.

Chairman HAYS. Well, it occurs to me- and I rather agree with Mrs. Bolton-that when you get a student who obviously expected something different from what you are prepared to offer him, you shouldn't have so much pride in this whole thing that you don't want to send him on somewhere else. There will be enough for Hawaii in return if you send on very many of them. Congress is interestedand I think I can speak for the Congress-not only in offering as much of our educational systems to these folks as we can, but we are interested in when they go back home that they not go back hostile to the United States or unhappy with us. We would like to get a dividend out of this in the feeling that they accomplished something and they are friends of ours rather than becoming pretty severe critics, and I think if there isn't enough flexibility built into the program, I think we should suggest that it ought to be built in immediately to take care of special situations of this kind. It may very well come through your screening processes. Mrs. Bolton?

Mrs. BOLTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Dr. Snyder-perhaps asking kindergarten questions-however, I would very much like to know in the original conferences and discussions of the Center, was there any conference or consultation with Asians?

Dr. SNYDER. Yes, largely by taking advantage of those who came through here and then by sending a team of our own people on a long trip through all the Asian countries on which they visited every one except, I believe, they were kept from one or two by civil wars at the time. Mr. Wachter was the director of that team, the chairman of it,. and they covered all the countries and discussed the Center at great length with all of the educators, the government people in the countries and various others. Mr. Wachter could give you a thumbnail sketch of that report and there is, of course, a very lengthy written report on that trip, so there has been considerable discussion. I will ask Mr. Turnbull to implement my statement because he has been so close to it.

Mr. TURNBULL. Yes, in addition to sending this team abroad, we have, of course, since then sent some of our own administrative people and faculty out into various parts of Asia to continue discussions of this kind and to solicit suggestions and ideas. In addition to this some of the consultations which we had planned for the Center have taken place, including, for example, a consultive meeting we had in February this year in which we brought in a number of people who have had considerable experience with student exchange and international education programs. We have also met in Honolulu with a large number of Asian university presidents, with deans of colleges, and I spent an hour just day before yesterday with the dean of the College of Science from Chulalongkom University, for example, as we often do with various government officials from Asian countries, and in each case we receive from them any ideas and suggestions they have about this. We have employed a number of other consultants and we have always had from the beginning an intention and plan to provide for some kind of international advisory board. There are two or three reasons why this has not been done to date. In the first place, we have recognized that this board must be formed with great caution. To select even a dozen people from many countries is extremely difficult. Not that there are not able people; on the contrary, there are a great many able people, but we must decide which of these would be the most useful, interested and helpful. There also have been some problems over which we had no special knowledge or control, such as the varying political situations in the countries, and finally I have urged caution in appointing this board because I believe the incoming chancellor, when he takes office, should have the opportunity to survey the field and make choices which he would feel would be most effective for him. I might mention one other thing: We did provide some assistance this fall during this 10th Pacific Science Congress for some of the 2,000 scientists were brought from many Asian countries here for extensive and serious conferences. The East-West Center actually supported 32 of those people and in addition sought from others quite a body of suggestions and opinions which we have incorporated into our program and which we have used in considering, reviewing, and evaluating these programs.

Mrs. BOLTON. What access do we have to reports of that kind? Mr. TURNBULL. I would be glad to provide you with any of these documents you care for. I don't think we have that particular report in the room here this morning, but I will see that you get a copy you would like it.

if

Mrs. BOLTON. Our decisions will have to be made after we have had a chance to study this.

Mr. TURNBULL. Yes. We will see that you get those documents. (The reports appear in the appendix, p. 334.)

Mrs. BOLTON. Dr. Snyder, do you see the Center necessarily a part of the university?

Dr. SNYDER. I am quite sure the objectives of the Center could not be achieved without the closest use of the university's facilities.

Mrs. BOLTON. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be under the jurisdiction of the university, does it?

Dr. SNYDER. No, but the university is here; the university is capable, and some way or other it must use university facilities.

Mrs. BOLTON. You take the setup at Princeton that Representative Seely-Brown was speaking about, the arrangement there is a very happy one, exceedingly useful, and it does use the university but they are distinctly separate. You wouldn't have any objection to that, would you?

Dr. SNYDER. I think as far as things have gone to date it would be rather a wrench to separate them.

Mrs. BOLTON. Well, perhaps it was a wrench at Princeton, but if a thing is right, it's right. I would like to feel that you would give that kind of possibility very serious study because there is a feeling abroad that Princeton has-I use Princeton because I know it-a method which is very valuable and very constructive and they have worked through some of those problems. After all, Princeton is much older.

Mr. TURNBULL. Perhaps I might comment on this, Mrs. Bolton. We have gone far in clarifying the relationships and integration with the university on the one hand and on the other hand with pulling out, as it were, certain portions of the Center's programs from such a close tie with the university, especially since the excellent assistance and report we had provided to us, at our request, by Dr. Clark Kerr and a group of consultants that were brought in in the very early summer. This has meant, in particular, that the advanced projects, senior-scholar research program has gone more in the direction of the Institute of Advanced Study, though they are not necessarily alike. In the technical training program, the inservice training program, we have established what, in effect, operates as a fairly autonomous body. We do utilize the Center thus at the present time as an instrument, as a tool, as a kind of holding corporation, related to our overall objectives, and are proceeding, I think, very rapidly with a kind of system whereby we utilize the university and its resources when and where they are useful, but at the same time are thinking of Hawaii and the university not as a kind of post hole in which we hide the Center but as a springboard from which this whole Center goes, and we are establishing a number of links with other universities and other institutions. We have already sent some of our students on. We have plans for and are involved in some plans in which we use resources of other institutions, so I believe that we now have a modified program, not completely allied to the university, which does allow us to use the best of the university's resources in what has been a process of excellent cooperation, and yet at the same time in many of our principal programs allows the Center right now to operate with rather remarkable autonomy. We do report, through the president of the university, to the board of regents, but we have essentially made and recommended and had accepted, I think, autonomous decisions in those areas which are clearly national in their character and in their possibilities.

Mrs. BOLTON. May I have another minute? Some of us have dreamed a little ourselves of a place where the East and West could learn to understand each other. This has been a marvelous opportunity, a terrific challenge, and a very, very great responsibility. Some of us feel that it is, in a way, almost a last chance to bring about real understanding. Now, that kind of understanding comes not just from the intellect, not just from studies, not just determined strong living:

it comes from wanting to understand the heart of the other person. That can't be done if there are all kinds of little irritations and difficulties. I have happened to work a good deal transferring people from other countries. We have found that unless we took the trouble to know the philosophic background from which they come, their daily condition and methods of life, very intimately, and made it possible for them, while they were with us, to continue as themselves rather than have to fit into an area that they don't understand, it's an irritation, and many times it is against everything they really feel. I would hope that you here are proceeding-it will have to be slowly and with great difficulty-into some of those heartful things that perhaps will make all the difference between success and failure as far as the world is concerned. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNBULL. You want me to comment on that?

Mrs. BOLTON. Yes.

Mr. TURNBULL. I share your hope, and certainly your will and interest in this is what we are after. I might say that, first of all, we have a rather extraordinary community in Hawaii, I believe, made up of a number of people

Mrs. BOLTON. May I interrupt you just there?

Mr. TURNBULL. Yes.

Mrs. BOLTON. Isn't there a possible danger in feeling, "We have done it here; we understand each other; we can all live together?" Is that really fundamentally true or is that just a little bit of something else?

Mr. TURNBULL. I would agree there is always a danger in this. My feeling is something like this. We try at the Center, or think we are trying, to recognize that we can overstate this, overdo it, and we, therefore, must seek the assistance and cooperation of many other people.

Mrs. BOLTON. I think you are doing it.

Mr. TURNBULL. On the other hand I think that our faculty and the people who are on the staff of the Center who work here with students in this Center have certain elements in the atmosphere which are helpful to us. I will make only a very trivial example if I may. I happen to bank my monthly check at a bank just down the street, which is directed by a board of directors-this is an American board, of course; they are all citizens-very fine ones but it is primarily made up of Japanese people. It has on the bank windows signs in Japanese and Chinese, as well as English, and one may speak to the clerks and tellers in the bank in any of these languages, and this, I must say, as a working member of this institution, has its effect, perhaps very subtly, upon me. We believe this is a kind of asset. One other thing I want to mention: We have had in our faculty an extraordinary degree of cooperation and willingness to go out of the way to face these special problems. I am sure many other faculties and many other people would do the same, and yet so many people here are so interested in these same ideals, explicitly, as the real opportunity for this country, that I think the cooperation we have had it is not uniform-the cooperation we have had in this regard is extraordinary. Mrs. BOLTON. I hope we continue to work on these lines. Chairman HAYS. Mr. Saund?

Mr. SAUND. Dr. Snyder, I sincerely appreciate your extemporaneous remarks before the committee and know that you are dedicated to

78304-62-3

« PreviousContinue »