April showers will bring a flood of international students to campus this year — a wave some hope will help bridge troubled relations between the United States and two European nations.
As part of the first Franco-German-American Youth Seminar, 25 French and German students will meet with 35 Northwestern students to discuss current events and matters of foreign policy April 1-5.
Foreign participants will arrive in Evanston from the University of Saarbruecken in Germany and from the Institut D’Etudes Politiques de Paris and the University of Metz, both in France.
The seminar is the first in a series organized by the newly formed Franco-German Youth Office’s U.S. Scholars Program.
Anne Smith, the group’s U.S. coordinator, said the program was created by the Franco-German Youth Office, an organization founded in 1963 in response to animosity between France and Germany as a result of World War II.
The discussion is the first of a series of seminars the group said it hopes to hold at universities around the country, Smith said.
Although conflicts over U.S. involvement in Iraq did not directly spur the creation of the program, they did illustrate the need for it, Smith said.
“Everyone is aware of the deterioration of relations following the war,” Smith said. “I think now there is the idea that we need to try to focus on encouraging good relations.”
Danika Robinson, a Weinberg junior and participant in the program, said she hopes the seminar will improve relations by clarifying foreign perceptions about citizen support for U.S. involvement in Iraq.
“Some people take our country to be embodied in our leader,” Robinson said. “It’s important for them to know that just because our president is like that doesn’t mean everyone in the country believes in taking that direction for the country.”
The seminar will be centered around answering the question, “Is the Atlantic Growing Wider?” Smith said she hopes the topic will “get a good discussion going without it being hostile.”
Political science Prof. Michael Loriaux, the program’s NU coordinator, said he hopes students discover in the course of the discussion that similarities between cultures and beliefs outweigh differences.
“I suspect (the differences) are very small,” he said. “What differences there are are greatly magnified by politics in the context of the Iraqi crisis.”
As part of the seminar, students will participate in discussions in French, German and English, listen to faculty speakers and attend a keynote speech by Richard C. Longworth, former business editor and columnist for the Chicago Tribune who has followed the conflict in Iraq, Loriaux said.
Some participants said the dialogue will be particularly effective because it will involve college students rather than middle-aged politicians and diplomats.
“Young people are a good starting point for diplomacy,” said Cathy Larkin, a Medill senior and program participant.
Loriaux said he hopes the age similarities between students will help promote camaraderie. This will be reinforced by the recreational aspect of the seminar, which includes a tour of Chicago and a trip to Improv Olympic.
“I hope and expect (the students) will be excellent hosts,” Loriaux said. “I think they’ll make some new friends.”
By the end of the program, Loriaux said, he hopes “there is sufficient success for the Europeans to invite us over there next year.”
