Foreign Visitors See Harvard Campus

Salleh Daud flicked an ash from his Lucky Strike.

"Your freshies are put on ragging?" he queried eagerly of the Crimson Key guide who was taking him around Harvard Yard. "Ragging," as it turned out, is the Malaysian equivalent of hazing; the guide assured his foreign visitor that no, freshmen at Harvard were not subjected to the traditional initiation rites which Malaysian students undergo.

Daud, editor-in-chief of the Malaysian news agency Bernarma, will be traveling in the United States for 30 days. He is typical of the approximately 1695 foreign visitor the University Marshal hosts every year, the great majority of whom are channeled to Harvard by the State Department as part of its "Leaders' Program."

Cultural Exchange

The Leaders' Program funds trips to the United States by foreigners who are exceptional in their field--whether it be journalism, education, economics--although the emphasis of the program is on cultural exchange, rather than on purely academic dealings.

The State Department sends an itinerary and biographical sketch of these individuals to the University Marshal's headquarters in Wadsworth House, and the Marshal's office in turn arranges Crimson Key tours and appointments with desired professors.

"The great majority of guests are educators or government officials, rather than businessmen, who want to understand the administrative workings of an American University," Judith L. Neal, staff assistant to the University Marshal, said.

She added that Harvard is only one stop in the itinerary of the visitors, and that they sojourn in such cities as Chicago, New York, and Las Vegas in order to view a cross-section of American life.

Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor and director of the Japan Institute, said of his experience with foreign visitors, "The ones I see have some interest in East Asia itself, and want to talk to me as an authority. Most are European newspapermen who ask my opinion on American-East Asian foreign policy."

Reischauer said that occasionally foreign scholars visit him to discuss how their academic discipline was treated at Harvard, but by and large, the visits are "not a very academic nature."

The largest bloc of visitors--191 last year--is from Japan. However, Neal said there has been a "steadily increasing" number of foreign guests, including a strong bloc of Japanese, since the end of World War II.

Salleh Daud, having just viewed a panoramic perspective of Harvard University from atop the 15th floor of William James Hall, remarked that he was going to write a news story on his visit after he returned to Malaysia.

"To do that, I need to talk to the people here," he said. "After all, I didn't come here to look at buildings. I came to talk to people."