On the heels of her commencement address at George Washington University, during which she urged the graduating class to “take it global,” First Lady Michelle Obama told students at Wayne State University in Detroit yesterday to “engage broadly” with the world and to participate in an exchange program if at all possible— “it’ll advance yo

Connecting young people around the world through physical and virtual exchange is a “national imperative,” writes Ed Gragert, executive director of iEARN, in the Huffington Post. Gragert, an Alliance board member, calls for President Obama to commit to linking “every school in the U.S. with at least one other school somewhere in the world through virtual exchanges by 2016.”

The United States must support cultural exchange programs such as the Iraqi Women’s Fellowship Foundation if it wants to ensure success in Iraq, writes former assistant secretary of state Bradford Higgins in the Christian Science Monitor:

The Summer 2010 issue of Howard magazine focuses on the topic of “Merging Global and Local Perspectives” and the university’s dedication to upping the number of minority students who study abroad:

Two colleges in Mexico have suspended their student exchange programs with the University of Arizona out of concern over Arizona’s new immigration law, the Arizona Republic reports. The National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí will no longer send students to UA because of “fears they will be harassed.”  

More than three hundred guest Chinese teachers have volunteered to work for up to three years in American schools, stemming from a partnership between an agency of China’s Ministry of Education and the College Board, the New York Times reported yesterday. The Chinese government subsidizes the salaries of these guest teachers.

“India's minister in charge of higher education, Kapil Sibal, brought before Parliament on Monday a long-awaited bill that would allow foreign colleges and universities to open campuses in India and oversee their operations,” reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A “handful of institutions” are “opening so-called liaison offices abroad, distinguished by their multiple missions to support international teaching, research, student exchange, and alumni engagement,” reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The United States government has deemed Farsi as “critical...for a growing number of government jobs in intelligence and defense,” reported the Washington Post, yet "icy relations" make it very difficult for Farsi students to engage in academic exchanges with Iran in order to bolster their language skills:

“Learning a foreign language—not just in snippets but as a sustained education—allows students to take on an alternative identity and see the world in different ways,” writes Peter Pfeiffer, a former language tutor, in a Washington Post Letter to the Editor as a rebuttal to Jay Mathews’ ‘Class Struggle’ blog.