The International Center held its grand opening ceremony last Friday (April 21) in the same multipurpose room where 2½ months ago the Office of Global Affairs held a forum on President Donald Trump’s first set of executive orders on immigration.
“We had a standing-room-only crowd or more than 250 students and scholars and others asking questions and airing their very real concerns over the then-sudden restrictions on immigration and travel,” Interim Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter told the audience that had gathered for the International Center’s grand opening.
“This is another reason why this International Center is so important — so our growing numbers of internationally engaged students and scholars and faculty can come together under an ‘international banner,’ one that we’re really so proud to be flying here at UC Davis.”
The keynote speaker, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, whose district includes UC Davis, followed up on Hexter’s remarks. “The way in which our government … is treating immigrants, treating visitors to our country, deserves all of our attention, and it deserves our pushback.
“There is no way this great nation will be great in the future if it divorces itself from the world and … instead of welcoming the world, pushes it out. We will not succeed.
“And so, this building, those who work here, and the goal of this work, need to be constantly on our mind, in our heart and always in our advocacy,” said Garamendi, who began his career in public service as a Peace Corps volunteer more than five decades ago; he and his wife, Patti, volunteered together in Ethiopia, 1966-68.
‘We will prosper spiritually, intellectually’
“We cannot be an inward nation,” Rep. Garamendi said. “We must welcome the entire world and all its curiosity and all its beauty and all its languages and all its cultures.”
He pointed to Friday’s program-opening performance by the student dance troupe AfroVibes as an example, “bringing to us the beauty of the world, bringing it to our doorstep, bringing it to our campus.”
As international students and scholars come to UC Davis, as they find a welcoming atmosphere, Garamendi said, they also find colleagues, other students, professors and researchers “who want to know them and want to draw from their intellectual capacity, the wisdom that they have brought with them.”
In turn, he said, “We will prosper, perhaps financially, but far, far more important, we will prosper spiritually, we will prosper intellectually and we will become a far better society.”
Garamendi said of international students: “As they work with us together, as they meld into our community, they bring their energy (and) they bring the most important thing of all, and that is their hope, for themselves and for the communities from which they have come.”
He congratulated Hexter and all those involved in making the International Center a reality. “Something very important is happening here today,” he said. “It’s an opening, a celebration, it’s a door to our future that all of you have unlocked, and in doing so, you have brought the promise of a good future.”
Grand opening with a grand open house
A grand open house — taking in all of the three-story building — followed the ceremony. A crowd of more than 350 ventured in and out of classrooms, study lounges and offices (including Study Abroad), participating in hands-on activities (origami, for example), meeting international students, and learning about the varied programs run by Global Affairs and UC Davis Extension’s Center for International Education.
Dean Paul M. McNeil of UC Davis Extension recalled his remarks at the International Center’s