Oxford Journal; Antidote to Eurocritics In Red, White and Blue

Oxford Journal; Antidote to Eurocritics In Red, White and Blue

by Warren Hoge
New York Times
06/05/2002

OXFORD, England -- Jason H. Wasfy, 23 and a 2001 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Seth Green, also 23 and a 2001 graduate of Princeton, are both Marshall Scholars at Oxford. They arrived in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the suicide attacks on New York and Washington.

Mr. Green said that in the early days there were repeated instances of strangers spontaneously expressing solidarity with Americans. Mr. Wasfy's first sight in London was British firefighters raising money for their counterparts in New York under a flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack.

At a McDonald's in Oxford in November 2001, an Englishwoman heard his American accent and immediately said, ''I wanted you to know how sorry all of us here in Britain are for what happened and how much we are thinking about you.''

After these promising beginnings, Mr. Wasfy, Mr. Green and a third American, 24-year-old David Tannenbaum, a 2001 Princeton graduate, viewed the subsequent fall in the image of the United States in Europe with alarm and surprise, and they resolved to do something about it.

They started a student organization at Oxford called Americans for Informed Democracy, setting out, as their statement of purpose says, ''to inspire a more globally engaged America as well as a world ready to embrace American involvement in world affairs.''

With 260 members representing 35 countries, they have staged forums with guest speakers, written opinion articles for newspapers and college publications and set up dialogues with British, European and Muslim groups. These activities have yet to cost them even $1,000, most of which they say they have furnished from their own pockets.

Where many American student activists of the 1960's embraced the thinking of overseas critics and often shared in their condemnations of United States policy, these students assertively proclaim their patriotism and their bedrock belief in American values with an idealism that they insist is nonpartisan.

Mr. Wasfy characterized the membership as ''moderate'' and said that while liberals probably outnumbered conservatives, most of the group supported the war in Iraq. ''Our position is not incompatible with Republican ideas,'' he said.

Christopher Bradley, 24, a doctoral candidate from Dallas, agreed, saying that he felt comfortable expressing his view that a lot of the anti-American feeling stemmed from ''Oxford's smug liberal core and academic condescension.''

Mr. Tannenbaum said, ''We have tried very hard not to appear to be Bush bashers.''

Hanna Hyry, a 21-year-old undergraduate from Helsinki, president of the European Affairs Society, a student group representing 800 Europeans at Oxford, said her members welcomed the Americans' initiative because they had always thought Americans stuck to themselves and did not care to interact with outsiders. ''We wanted to find out if there were different kinds of Americans,'' she said.

Regardless of their political leanings, the American student activists say that what bothers them are the caricatures now common in Europe of Americans as cowboys, bullies, rapacious oil company executives and despoilers of the environment.

''Coming from Seattle, I find myself wanting to explain that America is a little more diverse and complex than it's being portrayed,'' Elizabeth Angell, 21, a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Washington said.

''There is such a depth in the divide, such an unwillingness for people to see issues from the perspectives of the other actors,'' she said. ''It seems to be hard for people in the States to empathize with why people elsewhere are opposed to American foreign policy, and it seems very difficult for a lot of people in Oxford to understand why the American public supports by such a large margin a policy that seems so incomprehensible to them.''

At Oxford, Americans have traditionally constituted the largest foreign student group, with 927 out of an overseas population of 4,246, according to the latest figures. The overall student body numbers 16,590.

Both Mr. Green, who is going to Yale Law School next year, and Mr. Wasfy, who will be at Harvard Medical School, hope to carry on the A.I.D. campaign in the United States.

''For a lot of reasons, Americans are unable or uninterested in traveling abroad,'' Mr. Green said. ''They don't have the full picture and they end up demonizing all Europeans. Just as we've been telling people here that all Americans aren't George W. Bush, we want to tell Americans that all Europeans aren't Jacques Chirac.''

Please note: David Tannenbaum and Chris Bradley, who are quoted in this article, do not believe that it accurately reflects AID's founding vision. Click here to read their response to the article.