Dispatches from CIES, BTS at Howard University, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of March 24 - April 3.
Note: Around the College Town is my weekly-ish links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.
Dispatches from CIES
I have been in San Francisco all week for CIES. No, not the aviation tech company, but rather the education conference. It was the 70th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). It brings together thousands of researchers, scholars, students, and practitioners from around the world to discuss various issues in global education and development.
The big thing that everyone noticed this year was that CIES was not well attended. A lot of past attendees skipped the event, especially those coming from abroad. Stories of colleagues failing to secure a visa were rampant, along with reports that others were basically soft-boycotting the country.
CIES is not a large drop in US tourism, yet the absence of international travelers is indicative of the entire mood of the sector. The US is just not as attractive a place to visit as it once was; travelers are rightfully worried about visa rejections (wasted time/money), harassment by authorities, and general dangers of US cities. Inflation of the USD against other currencies is also a big part of this calculus. The downstream effects on tourism, restaurants, and other entertainment are clear for the entire country, but especially in a popular destination.
Given these concerns, the chatter around the conferences was that CIES should abandon the US for a few years. Next year is already scheduled for Madison, Wisconsin, and the following year in Seattle, Washington. Yet, in the past, it has been in Mexico City and Canada, so concerned attendees raised the question of possibly changing. However, contracts have already been signed, and a move seems unlikely.
Again, CIES is just small potatoes in the grand scheme of US tourism, but the insights can be extrapolated. The World Cup is just a few months away, which will be jointly hosted here. Likewise, the LA Olympics is two years away. The same soft protests of CIES are creeping into these global sports venues. International travelers seem to be eschewing the US leg of the World Cup, and there are rumblings that the tournament should pull out altogether. Similar calls have been made about the upcoming Olympics, which I do expect to have some kind of official boycotts similar to 1984.
In terms of CIES, admittedly, some domestic travelers did not want to visit San Francisco. Many Americans have a love-hate relationship with the Bay Area. It’s the site of so much innovation for the entire world, yet so much disruption to everyday space. The city, and really all of California, also has an image of being dysfunctional yet astronomically expensive.
I certainly saw my fair share of homeless individuals with psychosis on the streets. Attendees from small college towns kept telling me how surprised they were with the general degradation. If you are not used to this, it can be quite uncomfortable. There are obviously dangers involved, too. Perhaps these conditions would be more tolerable if there were hazard pay discounts, but the amenities of the place are still expensive. What’s the point of visiting then?
So the main takeaways of the conference were not even actual education innovations or developments. Instead, the global mood around the United States’ place in the world was the key debate. It certainly overshadowed my little event on higher education and urbanism. Bummer.
Links I’m Reading This Week
Education
Newport Beach, California, is considering a ban on students riding e-bikes to school. It is sad that the US does everything it can to ignore the real problem of cars, even at the detriment to kids.
In an even more extreme version, a Bay Area man arrested for installing stop signs and crosswalks to slow down dangerous drivers who almost killed his children. Wild.
Despite booming growth, school districts in the Dallas Metroplex are looking to close schools. Some are blaming zoning—the Lone Star State is sounding a lot like its hated Golden State rival here.
The US Secretary of Education posted a random Tweet about a 20-year-old handheld gaming console (Sony’s PSP). It’s still up! Very strange.
Florida governor hopeful wants to raise tuition on international students to a million dollars. It is a total misunderstanding of the higher education space.
Brunel University of London in the UK is over 50 million pounds in debt! My guess is we see a wave of closures there soon, just like in the US.
Kentucky and Northern Kentucky Universities join together for shared facilities. As construction prices continue to climb, I think we will see more joint projects like this in higher ed to share the risk burdens.
Urbanism-ish
As Honda loses market share, the Japanese automaker pulls back from some of its ambitious plans. It is a pity that this once champion of smaller cars has fallen so hard.
Amtrak announced a new service connecting LA to Phoenix. I am very much looking forward to this route!
RIP to DC’s streetcar. Apparently a big waste of time and money.
Taking away your parents’ car keys is becoming a generational struggle. It is a must to protect everyone else on the road.
Vegas launches cheap deals again! Finally. Luxor and Excalibur all-inclusive experience: two guests, two nights, three meals daily, two show tickets, parking included. I am planning to test this out in the summer.
Closing Time… BTS is Back and in College
The K-pop band BTS has recently gotten back together after putting their careers on hiatus for mandatory military service to their country. Noble! The first concert back in Seoul is the kickoff of a new global comeback tour.
In part of this new world tour, the BTS team released a short animated film on Korean students at Howard U in the late 1800s. This was supposed to be an inspiring story to connect early international students who laid the foundation for the band to become global stars. The opening capture reads:
This video was inspired by the story of seven young Koreans as documented in The Washington Post on May 8, 1896 (“Seven Koreans at Howard”), some of whom captured the first known audio recordings of Koreans in Washington, D.C., on July 24 of that same year.
Unfortunately, some American commentators did not appreciate the depictions in the film. You see, the exchange happened at Howard University, a historically Black college (HBCU) in Washington, DC. But when the short animation panned to the crowd, there were only a few Black people. This faux pas elicited considerable backlash.
One headline in Inside Higher Ed read, “K-Pop Band BTS Misrepresents Howard University as Predominantly White in Video,” along with a scathing critique of the band. Sophie Kropman at The Martini Police broke down some of the consternation surrounding Arirang, the BTS comeback album:
Others are wounded by the visual and historical representation around the Howard University imagery and the presence of an American actress in the video, reading those choices as whitewashing or a flattening of Black history and Korean symbolism.
It is too bad that the controversy has tainted an interesting tidbit of history. The full sequence that people are mad about was literally just a couple of seconds long. It is frustrating that American sensibilities often center our own culture, history, and experiences. America’s Culture Wars are not World Wars. We should not expect BTS (or really most of anyone else abroad) to have a deep, nuanced understanding of every cultural issue in our country. We know little about other countries, yet we also demand that they know us well. It is American Exceptionalism Hypocrisy.
To be fair, Howard University itself released a statement mostly praising the video. Yes, they did mention the brief depiction, but most of the statement in The Dig was celebratory. “If you ever needed proof that Howard is a global cultural mecca, you can look back as far as 1896. That year, Howard opened its doors to house and educate seven Korean students during a time of political upheaval in their country,” wrote the authors. They also lauded Korean culture and relations to HBCU and broader Black culture, including the influence of rap and hip-hop in K-Pop. Kudos to Howard here.
Despite the few outraged, I think most will agree the video is a pretty cool celebration of US-Korean relations. I’m glad that higher ed is playing a small part in this global comeback tour. Cheers to BTS and Howard. See the video below:
"potentially charging parents with child endangerment under state law to deter unsafe e-bike riding" is crazy. I don't know the tilt of the "Voice of OC" but it sounds like most parents are _against_ this change, but some of the board members are for it and want to make it sound like parents who aren't there tell them privately to ban the bikes.
Also goes towards the "e-bike" vs "e-moto" difference, where the boardmember is right to want to ban Razor crotch rocket knock-offs but wrong to want to ban a normal class 1 e-bike. Big difference, but people group them all the same.