Marlene Johnson is in the last few months of her near-20 year tenure as executive director and CEO of NAFSA. Under her leadership, the association has worked to strengthen its support of international educators, campaigned tirelessly for immigration reform and played a pivotal role in the lifting the academic travel ban on Cuba. Here she reflects on her legacy.
The PIE: Looking back on your time as head of NAFSA, what stands out for you?
MJ: NAFSA has been through an extraordinary series of changes over the last 18 years. Many of them have been tough, some of them have just been a little messy and some have been a lot. We have strengthened the core of our work in terms of serving international student services people, study abroad people. We’ve also responded to the expanding field, to embrace the international enrolment management evolution.
“When I came to NAFSA, the language of senior international officers didn’t exist”
When I came to NAFSA, the language of senior international officers didn’t exist. The only universities that had somebody who could conceivably be called that category were the Big 10, a few of the big research universities, John Hudzik [at Michigan State University] and his comrades, but otherwise it wasn’t the way higher education was speaking. It was the beginning of an understanding that an international educational policy was an important thing.
I think the organisation has been very determined and has had a lot of courage to stay with it, because the leaders have day jobs and then they have to help lead the members. It’s been very exciting to work in a field and in an organisation that is so committed to change and to be responding to the trends and the opportunities. That’s one of the things that I’m most excited about that we’ve accomplished.
The PIE: That’s part of the response position that NAFSA takes, but you’re also very proactive advocates for important issues.
MJ: That’s the other part that I’m very proud of, the leadership role we have taken in public policy, because I think that’s done a couple of things. First of all, because we are a value-based organisation, our people on the campus can easily get bogged down in the day-to-day stuff of supporting international students, getting our own students to study abroad and all the other things they’re doing.
I’ve had dozens and dozens of members tell me how good it made them feel to be part of something that had a bigger role in our society, whether it’s immigration reform, lifting the Cuba academic travel ban early on, international education policy or introducing the Paul Simon study abroad legislation.
We are unique because our public policy is a broad public policy issue. The other higher education associations have very important roles in Pell Grant renewals and research funding and many of the higher ed acts. We don’t work on those because they are owned by the presidential associations, as they should be. What we have chosen to do is to look at what are those larger issues that need higher education’s voice in them.
“If we had not participated already in the immigration reform prior to 9/11 it would be very hard for us to be heard now”
But we can only be heard as a higher education voice if we are in early enough to have credibility. If we had not participated already in the immigration reform prior to 9/11 it would be very hard for us to be heard. But even at that, it took us two years of correcting the mistakes by the media in how they characterised the perpetrators. But we slogged that out and I’m very proud of that because it’s the metaphor for why NAFSA as an organisation is a valued policy contributor in this arena.
The PIE: When I speak to people about you they say your political background, which includes serving as Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, has been important to put some teeth to NAFSA’s advocacy. How do you think that has helped you position the organisation?
MJ: Well, I think my political background precedes my lieutenant governor’s work. In some ways I grew up in it because when I was small my dad was one of the founders of an electric co-op movement in Minnesota. As a child, I listened to these conversations about the relationship between politics and putting electricity in my grandmother’s farm. There was always a connection between what they were doing in Washington and what was happening on the ground in my little county.
So I think that I came to it a long time ago. My public life helped me connect a lot of dots. One of the special assets and opportunities of being in state politics is that you see the whole picture. You know how the businesses work, you know how the schools work, you understand that the better the schools do, the less business prisons have. You see if the parks are working for people, people have a better life. When you go to the store – you still do your own food shopping when you are a state politician – you talk to people and there’s no disconnect between how people are living and what you see in your work every day.
“You see the whole picture. You understand that the better the schools do, the less business prisons have”
You know what the price of milk is and at the same time you do trade missions. I did the first trade mission between Minnesota and Taiwan. It was a very exciting time, because the states were just getting involved and so we connected our secondary education reform with international education and created the first post-secondary options for high-school juniors and seniors in the country. They could go to college or university in Minnesota and the school district would have to pay their tuition.
So I think that was a good early learning for me about the relationship between policy and practice, which I think has been helpful to me as I’ve been at NAFSA.
The PIE: How did you get into international education?
MJ: When I was lieutenant governor, my portfolio always included education and childcare and tourism. I had to give speeches on anything that was of interest to whoever asked.
Before I came to NAFSA I was fancy free for almost a year, deciding what I wanted to do before I grew up and I decided that I wanted to do specifically international. I had been in an international marriage by then for quite a while and I thought it would be nice to work with people who I didn’t have to explain that to. And serendipity happened. We met and NAFSA took a big leap because I didn’t meet the criteria they believed they needed and it was too late for me to get a PhD in time to get this job!
The PIE: What’s your macro perspective? Where do you see the United States sits in the global education field?
MJ: We are one player. We’re not as dominant as we were before and it’s not because we were doing things earlier, it’s because the field is growing. There is more mobility, period. Everywhere. As it should be. We can’t be the preferred destination for the world. There’s an aspect of that, of course, because there’s a lot going for us. There’s a lot of curiosity and interest and energy around working and studying in the US and that’s important and good.
“We’re not as dominant as we were before because the field is growing. There is more mobility, period. Everywhere. As it should be”
It’s also true that people need to know their own regions better. We can’t handle all the students in the world and we need lots of students, including our own, going to other places in the world. The capacity to engage across borders, culturally and economically and socially, is very very important. Within Asia there is an amount of mobility today that 10 years ago didn’t exist. The language of mobility in Asia is English, which shocked us all. That’s a different world than in 1998, when I came to NAFSA.
The PIE: How would you like to see things develop for the US in the next decade?
MJ: I would like comprehensive immigration reform to address the issues that specifically affect international education. I would like policy makers to know the importance of international education for all of our students, young ones and in higher education. I would like language learning to be integrated into our schools at the primary school age. I would like us to quadruple our engagement with Cuba. We are making progress in Latin America with President Obama’s initiative – it’s been such a pleasure for NAFSA to engage and be one of the team members of that effort, but there’s a long way to go.
It’s hard to imagine getting more public financial support for those kinds of initiatives but even greater bully pulpit [White House] support would be an asset and improve mindsets for policy makers and higher ed leaders. Most institutions now have international education in their strategic plan, but there’s a lot of improvement to be had in executing to that plan.
The PIE: How are you feeling about November 8? What’s your gut feeling for who’s going to win the election?
“I don’t think you build a country by appealing to people’s worst fears and worst biases”
MJ: I don’t know. It’s a very challenging time for us and I think the ugly rhetoric of prejudice and morals is so harmful to the country and is so counterproductive for building a strong nation. I do understand why so many people feel the system is not working for them. And I think that the economic changes have raised havoc for lots and lots of people and we don’t have safety nets and other ways of protecting people from severe hardship that we need to have. It’s horrible. No other western democracy is so absent of systems to look out for those people as we are.
But I don’t think you build a country by appealing to people’s worst fears and worst biases. All of us need to speak to the higher good in every conversation we have. We shouldn’t name call; we should instead help people understand things beyond where they are in little conversations – the barber shop, the beauty shop, the café, the church. These small conversations in our neighbourhoods are the ones that have the possibility of changing people’s minds and hearts. So between now and November 8 we have to keep slogging through that. Let’s talk on November 9.
The PIE: Do you have a plan post-NAFSA? Surely you won’t disappear into the shadows.
MJ: I don’t have a plan. My view is that I can’t make a plan until I’m in that space. Right now, I still have a job to do. So I’ll work on that in January.
The PIE: Tell me something that people don’t know about you.
MJ: I used to ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle when I was a young person, before I was lieutenant governor. I don’t ride one anymore but I love the bikes. If a Harley Davidson drives by my house I still wake up. The sound is beautiful to me.
