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Brenau University welcomes guest speaker Julia Chang Bloch,
former ambassador to Nepal and current president of the U.S.-China
Education Trust, a program devoted to promoting American Studies in China.
Activities:
- Public lecture on her experiences
as an international affairs professional, 7 p.m., Thursday, March 31, in
the Thurmond McRae Lecture Hall off Academy Street
- meeting with students during
her week as Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.
Bloch, Brenau University's 2005 Woodrow Wilson Visiting
Fellow, has an extensive career in international relations. She began as a
Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia in 1964 and was the first Asian
American to hold the rank of U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal, in
1989.
Renowned for her outspoken opinions on what she dubs
America's 'international knowledge gap,'" Bloch puts a lot of U.S.
citizen's cultural isolation down to the country's retreat from
international education after the Cold War. "We let U.S. competitiveness
in the international student market decline," she says. "We allowed
funding for exchange programs to decrease by 40 percent in real-dollar
terms over the past decade." |
A great exponent of global and cultural awareness, Bloch
maintains that education is the way forward and, she says, studying
overseas can help. "There has never been another time in history in which
the United States' influence on the rest of the world has been as great as
it is today - or its understanding of it less sufficient," Bloch says.
"The future demands that Americans learn to see themselves and their
nation from the outside in." Bloch received the Woman of the Year Award
from the Organization of Chinese American Women, 1987; the Leader for
Peace Award from the Peace Corps, 1987; and the Humanitarian Service Award
from the Agency for International Development, 1987. She currently serves
as ambassador-in-residence at the University of Maryland-College Park
Institute for Global Chinese Affairs, and the Starr Senior Fellow for
U.S.-China Relations at Peking University in Beijing and Fudan University
in Shanghai, China.
Her prior professional engagements include deputy
director of the Office of African Affairs for the International
Communication Agency; president of the United States-Japan Foundation and
chief minority counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and
Human Needs; and group executive vice president at Bank of America - where
she created and headed the Corporate Relations Department. Bloch earned
her master's degree from Harvard University and her bachelor's from the
University of California. In 1986 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of
Humane Letters from Northeastern University. Born in Chefoo, China, Bloch
moved to the United States as a child and grew up in San Fransico. She is
married and lives in Washington, D.C. The Woodrow Wilson National
Fellowship Foundation connects a liberal education with the world beyond
the campus by bringing thoughtful and successful practitioners to colleges
for a week of classes and informal discussions with students and faculty.
The foundation has developed and conducted programs in higher education
since 1945. |
