JEFFERSON would not be proud of our internationalization efforts to date." So proclaims the presumptuous report released by the Committee on Curriculum Internationalization last month. After its release, a few administrators duly gave statements and The Cavalier Daily wrote a lead editorial. Most of the University had better things to do. Yet some felt compelled to reignite the flames last week.
In a deliberate imitation of the Purple Shadows' stunt, someone distributed posters rolled up with purple string to Lawnies. These posters present a world map with continents' size weighted by the number of courses the University offers about them. O, what men dare do! Unsurprisingly, the United States and Europe end up significantly larger than Africa and East Asia. These childish stunts and the alarmist, sanctimonious report are indicative of a larger trend among the tireless internationalizers.
"Internationalization has questioned the very fabric of this institution," the report claims. "We will never attract the great minds of the next generation with the curriculum organized in the way it stands today," it continues as the hyperbole drips off the page. You -- complacent students and administrators -- hold us back. You shackle us to a University "bounded by imaginary borders and governed by Western intellectual dominance." While you fritter away your years learning Shakespeare and the Classics, what we "are doing at U.Va. is groundbreaking. We have started a new revolution."
Caught up in its own self-righteousness, the committee doubtlessly believes this is true. Chair Ryan McElveen even managed to quote himself. But all that glisters is not gold. Behind the vainglorious rhetoric, there are several concrete recommendations. Some are pointless, many are actually bad, but there are a handful that are crucial.
A recurring theme of the report is that the current curriculum and environment at the University are not conductive to diversity and, even worse, don't meet students' needs. The committee bases this on a survey conducted last year. Yet it's not enough to speak, but to speak true. The report fills page after page with graphs, but the methods of the survey are tucked away in a note in the appendix. The survey over-sampled various groups, such as women. Although this makes sense for getting more accurate data, it doesn't accurately reflect the views of the entire University; to fix this, the results need to be weighted. However, as McElveen told me, "the percentages in the report do not correct for over-sampling." This is bad statistics and means much of the report is, at best, suspect.
The report then takes these dubious results and proceeds to make sweeping recommendations. First up is an utterly pointless Center for International Studies. To be fair, this was originally the Commission on the Future's bad idea. Yet the committee's ringing endorsement of a multi-million dollar center takes scarce resources from what the University needs most
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