Wednesday, March 12, 2014
ASEEES President Hanson’s NYT Letter Regarding Need for Regional Experts
Published March 12, 2014
ASEEES President Stephen Hanson (College of William and Mary) and ASEEES member Henry Hale (George Washington University) penned a letter to the New York Times regarding the need for more trained experts on Russia as well as Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus in coming decades. The letter written was in response to the NY Times article, “Russia Experts See Ranks Thin, and an Effect on U.S. Policy” (news article, March 7), which noted a serious drop-off in the US expert pool in the last twenty years.
Hanson and Hale remarked that the situation would be much worse without the US Department of State’s Title VIII program and the US Department of Education’s Title VI program, both of which have seen drastic funding cuts. They called for renewed investment in these international training programs “that contribute so much to our security, economic competitiveness and cultural understanding.”
Read the full letter HERE.