Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton held a panel on the state's role in forming global relationships at the Pyle Center Monday, the first of its kind on campus since the Eisenhower administration.
""There is a rich fabric of citizen diplomacy that goes on in the state of Wisconsin,"" Lawton said. ""It strengthens the fabric of international relationships.""
Experts across fields participated in the panel, contributing their personal and professional perspectives on how states can be more involved with forging global connections.
Captain Joe Davidson, coordinator of the National Guard State Partnership Program, discussed how his program allows the state to create not only military bonds with foreign nations, but civilian connections as well.
The program, which was founded in 1993 in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union, pairs up states' National Guard Programs with newly democratized countries to establish similar civilian military programs. However, Davidson said the learning experience goes beyond the military component.
""You are able to conduct exchanges, learn about them, have them learn about us and contribute to our strategic objectives in a more comprehensive way than we would otherwise,"" Davidson said.
Mark Johnson, a UW-Madison professor of education policy and public diplomacy, stressed the need to fund international and foreign language programs.
""We are not adequately funding foreign language capacity, and that of course can only be done through a partnership of governments at every level—school districts, citizens, teachers [and] individual communities,"" Johnson said.
International involvement in the private sector was also a key part of the discussion. Patricia Bornhofen at Electrical Theatre Controls, an entertainment and architectural lighting company, stressed how through international commerce ETC has formed personal and commercial relationships around the world.
Bornhofen called ETC the ""Peace Corps for commerce.""
""It sounds very cheesy, it sounds very cliche, but when you watch your colleagues come back every other day from another country, taking off their burqa or coming back half hungover from Oktoberfest ... you get to know the people personally,"" she said.
