World Leaders Trained on US Campuses

Here’s anoth­er rea­son the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty is such a strate­gic mis­sion field–there are about 14,000,000 uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents attend­ing col­lege in Amer­i­ca and almost 4% of them are from oth­er nations.

The most recent sta­tis­tics I could find show that over half of them are from Asia and 7% are from the Mid­dle East. Many of these nations for­bid any sort of mis­sion­ary work–but they send their future lead­ers here to be trained! In fact, the Nav­i­ga­tors claim that 7 of the top 10 coun­tries that send stu­dents to the U.S. are closed to typ­i­cal miss­sion­ary efforts.

That’s impres­sive enough, but I’ll up the ante even fur­ther. I’ve heard that every major world leader except Sad­dam Hus­sein has stud­ied in Amer­i­ca, but I was­n’t able to ver­i­fy that claim. What I can do is list of some of the world lead­ers trained on Unit­ed States cam­pus­es. Imag­ine the poten­tial world impact of reach­ing the future lead­ers of the world today (inci­den­tal­ly, I have a relat­ed essay focused on Amer­i­ca)! The polit­i­cal scene is so tumul­tuous that I won’t both­er pre­tend­ing this is cur­rent. Assume that they’re pos­si­bly out of pow­er unless you hear their names on the news.

Ehud Barak, For­mer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, Stan­ford
Ale­jan­dro Tole­do, pres­i­dent of Peru, Stan­ford
Ben­jamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, MIT
Benizar Bhut­to, first female Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, Har­vard U
Car­los Sali­nas, pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co, Har­vard U
Lien Chan, Pre­mier of Tai­wan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go
Lee Teng Hui, Pres­i­dent of Tai­wan, Iowa State and Cor­nell
Saud Al-Fasial, For­eign Min­is­ter of Saudia Ara­bia, Prince­ton
Adul Al-Awa­di, Kuwaiti Min­is­ter of State, Har­vard
Kai-Wen Mao, Chi­nese Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion, UC Berke­ley and Carnegie-Mel­lon
Dhoukan Al-Hin­dawi, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
Osama al-Baz, Chief Advi­sor to Pres­i­dent Mubarak in Egypt, Har­vard
Bir Birkram Sha Dev Biren­da, King of Nepal, Har­vard
Tahir al-Mas­ri, Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas
Yosuko Mat­suo­ka, For­eign Min­is­ter of Japan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon

You don’t have to imag­ine the poten­tial impact, min­istry to inter­na­tion­al stu­dents has already had world­wide ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Con­sid­er this telling exam­ple:

A num­ber of years ago, Hal Guf­fey (for­mer pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dents, Inc.) was speak­ing to a group of Chris­tians about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to befriend inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. At the end of his talk a young lady from anoth­er coun­try approached him. She told him that though her father had not become a Chris­t­ian as a result of his stu­dent days in the U.S., nonethe­less he had returned home with a favor­able impres­sion of Chris­tians. Many years lat­er he found him­self in a posi­tion to decide whether Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies should be allowed to remain in his coun­try. He decid­ed they should be allowed to stay. (source)

If you know of any oth­ers world lead­ers who should be on the list, let me know via the com­ment box!