Word: fostering
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...should bear in mind how much we have accomplished already. We have made great progress in the expansion of the Faculty that I announced in the letter transmitting the April 2004 Report. A larger Faculty is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the improvement of undergraduate education. To foster small-group instruction, we have further expanded the Freshman Seminar Program to offer enough seminars to accommodate the entire freshman class. To give our students an education in the broader world in which they will work, we have expanded swiftly the opportunities and assistance for international study so that already...
...article published in the current edition of Military Review, Brig. Ailwin-Foster rips into the American military, charging it with arrogance, self-righteousness and cultural insensitivity bordering on "institutional racism." These traits, he suggests, prevented the Americans from building productive relationships with Iraqis - they may even have helped fuel the insurgency that wracks the country today...
...Having helped train Iraqi troops, Brig. Ailwin-Foster has had plenty of interaction with the American military. And, having myself watched the U.S. military from close quarters in Iraq for nearly three years, I find it hard to disagree with him. American cultural insensitivity was on display even in the minutes before Saddam Hussein's statue was famously toppled in Baghdad - remember the soldier who covered the statue's head with the Stars and Stripes? The Iraqis gathered in the square to celebrate the dictator's downfall took offense to that gesture...
...thing, nobody serving in the British contingent in Iraq was even alive when it was part of the Empire, so Brig. Ailwin-Foster's fellow soldiers don't have any real colonial experience. For another, the British were hardly beloved as colonizers - they were booted out of Iraq, just as they were from most of their colonies - so there was no reservoir of goodwill awaiting their return...
...behavior by British soldiers is no excuse for similar behavior by the Americans. The U.S. military would be well advised to take Brig. Ailwin-Foster's criticism seriously and train troops to be more sensitive to Iraqi culture and better behaved toward Iraqis. But it would be a good idea for the British military to do likewise...