It took two years and an exchange of visits by the leaders of the two schools, but SAU, Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia, and the U of A, in this case the University of Artemisa in Cuba, have inked an agreement setting up a wide array of student and faculty exchanges. It should be a new day for both schools and another tie between our two increasingly friendly countries. Bienvenidos y ¡Brava!
SAU's president, Trey Berry, says both universities are hoping to begin their happy new relationship come next summer. To quote him: "Education has always been a bridge between people and cultures. Education is also a bridge in understanding. Today we continue to build that bridge with the University of Artemisa . . . . We are doing this for the betterment of our students, our faculty and hopefully the people of our respective countries."
It was Dwight Eisenhower, a president not inclined to braggadocio, who in his time pushed cultural exchanges with the Russian people, then known as the Soviets, confident that this country and culture could more than hold its own in any comparison between the two. Ike dubbed it the people-to-people program. The big problem he encountered was not getting Russians to come to this country but to return to their own. One suspects that today the challenge won't be to attract Cubans to the United States but to see that they go home. Freedom is a powerful magnet, which may explain why people the world over have long sought to settle in this land of the free and home of the brave. Many were already free in their hearts and minds the moment they chose to strike out for this ever new world.
SAU isn't the only state university in Arkansas to build bridges with schools abroad. Arkansas State has its own campus south of the border in Queretaro, Mexico, financed by that country. ASU says it's planning to set up a whole range of exchange programs for its faculty and students, but right now is concentrating on recruiting and housing its first undergraduate class in Queretaro--while the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville long has had foreign-exchange programs with other schools.
Anyone who's ever played host to a foreign exchange student from abroad will soon discover ties are forged that can last a lifetime--and even extend to the next generation and beyond. Each such generation is another, continuing bridge to peace. Just listen to folks who have set up such programs recount how they did it, and it's not unlike lovers telling how they first met. The paper said SAU's foreign-exchange program is largely the brainchild of Ed Kardas, a distinguished professor of psychology at the school and director of its honors program. He chose to tag along when this state's chamber of commerce dispatched a delegation to Cuba in 2015 when relations between the two governments finally thawed--years after the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of war, if not mutually assured destruction, aka MAD. Competing in peacetime pursuits is a big and saving step up.
Southern Arkansas U. (go Muleriders!) set up the Extramural Education Committee on campus, put together a web page, and turned out brochures in Spanish about the school in preparation for Professor Kardas' next trip to the island. His mission was to help Cuba return to being the Pearl of the Antilles, for under the Brothers Castro it had become a police state better called the Churl of the Antilles--but it's now bustling with new life and new hope. (Just who was to blame for the long and dangerous deterioration in relations between the two nations can be left to scholars to figure out--even if demagogues both Cuban and American can still be counted on cast the first rhetorical stone. The rest of us are much too busy making peace and investments in a brighter future for both countries. We'd all do better to follow Ed Kardas' exemplary lead.)
To quote Carlos Eduardo Suarez Ponciano, president of the University of Artemisa in Cuba: "I believe . . . that after signing this agreement, that we will have to always be careful to revise it and renew it so that it becomes and remains a living document. All we have really done here is make a formal agreement, but it's going to be in the will of the future men and women working together that's going to make it work and that will also allow it to grow, develop, evolve in the future."
Gosh, just like the constitution of this state and of the United States, which only establish a basic framework. It's up to the people to fill it out--for good or ill, advance or retreat. Surely this partnership between these two universities is a fine beginning.
Editorial on 08/14/2017