Are the U.S. libe ral arts colleges . . . p re paring the next generation of American leaders for the new inte rnational interdependence which we face? College i s both the great e ngine for economic development and the place where the most sophisticated u nderstanding of foreign pol icy options should be gai ned .
I think there are additional steps which the United States should take now. First, we should give . . . financial and humani tarian aid to the African National Congress and should resu me the refugee assistance programs which existed dur i ng the Carter admi nistration . We hould give special support to the front line states neighboring South Africa so thal South Africa will be less tempted to in vade their territory as they have repeat edly done in recent years. If [Nelson] Mandela is not freed soon, we should in crease the diplomatic isolation of South Africa. We should downgrade our em bassy to counselor status and restrict South African diplomatic activity in this country. We might wish to limit Ameri can tourism to South Africa, curtail inter national telephone and telecommunica tions and air links with South Africa, and greatly reduce the number of visas grant ed to South African government support ers who wish to come to this country. I favor these kinds of additional sanc tions and pressures, if necessary, because I favor peaceful change. There will, some day, be talks between blacks and whites about power sharing in their country. . The only question is whether talks will begin in time to ward off revolutionary violence. Let me turn now to my third topic, Japan. At the beginning of this century, Secretary of State John Hay observed that the Mediterranean was the ocean of the past, that the Atlantic was the ocean of the present, and the Pacific would surely be the ocean of the future. The future is now. Japan has led the way to a leadership
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position in global productivity and trade, followed now by other Asian powers. How will the Uni ted States respond to the new power alignment which will force us to focus more on Japan in the future? The Japanese society differs fu n damentally from ours and yet, as was not ed in the May 1 986 conference in San Francisco sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, both societies are changing. Both are beginning to recog nize their profound interdependence . . At the same time, while protectionist rhetoric is growing in the United States, many participants in the San Francisco conference t hought that trade would eventually fade as an issue, once we get through the immediate period of econom ic frictions, and that we are in for a tre mendous new volume of cross-border investment that will establish and per petuate positive linkages between our two societies. For our part, the council report pre dicts, we will continue to negotiate for greater access to the Japanese market and we will probably have to reach some more permanent agreement on access to each other's technology. . . . We will also likely insist that the Japanese begin to bear a larger portion of the international military and economic burden as our con strained budgets force us to focus increas ingly on resolving domestic problems. While Japan is growing more inter national in its outlook, the United States, currently, is showing increased xenopho bia in the face of our staggering trade im balance. Americans as a whole, the Coun cil on Foreign Relations Conference was
told, have consistently favored protection ism at least two or t hree to one, and re cently the number of business executives favoring import restrictions rose from 1 5 percent i n 1 980 t o more than 50 percent in 1 985. How will we respond to the new importance of Japan in our lives? Will protectionism and isolation carry the day or is there some other solution? And this brings me to part four, Po mona. Are the U.S. liberal arts colleges, and Pomona in particular, preparing the next generation of American leaders for the new international interdependence which we face? College is both the great engine for economic development and the place where the most sophisticated understanding of foreign policy options should be gained. In sheer quantity, our system of 3 , 300 colleges and universities outshines the world. Fifty-six percent of American students go on to higher edu cation compared with only 20 percent in Great Britain and only 2 percent in the developing countries. Nevertheless, de spite our great number of students, the San Francisco conference on Japanese/ American relations reported that "For the United States, the single most obvious societal deficiency was the educational system'.' By this, they were referring pri marily to our underproduction of mathe maticians and scientists. Although the United States has more Nobel laureates t han any other nation, one major failure of our educational system was seen in its ranking at the bottom of the 15 countries in the Organization for Economic Coop eration and Development in math and science while Japan ranked first. . . .
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