news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051020/cm_usatoday/seeingusaaltershistory
USA TODAY Seeing USA alters history Thu Oct 20, 6:29 AM ET In 1959, one of the first Soviet exchange students - a zealous, card-carr ying Communist Party member named Alexander Yakovlev - attended New York 's Columbia University. He then went through a slow and remarkable metam orphosis.
click here Yakovlev, who died Tuesday at age 81, became the intellectual godfather o f the collapse of communism - as right-hand man to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Yakovlev turned into a champion of openness, press freedom a nd democracy. He insisted, to the end, that one of the most important th ings is for people to think and question for themselves. But Yakovlev is one of many foreign leaders and influential figur es who have spent time in America, then gone on to foster its values.
Tony Blair and former South African president FW de Klerk, who said seeing America n blacks and whites living together contributed to his decision to end a partheid. These stories demonstrate the quiet power of exchange and other study pro grams that the USA championed in the Cold War and badly needs to revive. The US image is near an all-time low as it engages in a war against m ilitant Islam that is about ideas, values and the way life is lived. Unfortunately, exchange programs are a shadow of their former selves. Pos t-9/11 visa requirements have made it hard for foreign students to enter the USA. In the 2003-2004 school year, their numbers fell for the first time since 1971, by 24%. Exchange students fell by a third between 199 5 and 2001. The agency overseeing exchanges was folded into the State De partment in 1999, its energy and much of its budget drained. Yakovlev's life provides a textbook case for reinvigorating the programs. He was exiled to Canada as ambassador until Gorbachev came to power. The rest, of course, is history: Yakovlev helped shape the "perestroika" (restructuring) and "glasnost" (openness) that led to the end of Soviet communism.
Some people, particularly religious fa natics, may not be swayed by study in the USA. But such exposure can sti ll influence future Yakovlevs in ways military action or media PR blitze s can't.
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