Thank
you so much. Well, I’m glad to have this opportunity to be here two
years after my husband was here. (Laughter.) And I think, as Thao says,
the Clintons and Vietnam have a very close relationship that I hope
continues for many, many years into the future. And to be here at this
great university, I really appreciate so much, Mr. President, President
Hoang Van Chau, thank you so much for you and your leadership, and
thanks to all of the students and the Fulbright alumni who are here as
we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Vietnam’s Fulbright Program.
I think it is easy when someone like me comes to visit or my husband
or Secretary Leon Panetta, who was just here, to focus on the high
officials who come to visit. But really, although that’s what draws the
headlines, what is as important, if not more important, are the daily
contacts between our people, so many Vietnamese and so many American
people who get to know one another, who have a chance to work together
or study together or even live together creating those bonds that really
do bring us closer together. So I’m delighted to be here representing
my country and the many, many millions of Americans who have a very
positive feeling about Vietnam and who care deeply about the future of
this country, and in particular, the future of young people like
yourselves.
One of the ways we show that is by supporting academic study abroad.
The United States has a long history of doing that, because we think it
helps Americans to visit other countries to learn and form lasting
bonds, and we want people from other countries to do the same in the
United States. And it’s no exaggeration to say that programs like the
Fulbright Program play a crucial role in America’s foreign policy. J.
William Fulbright was a very well known, famous American senator in his
time, and he believed so strongly that what was most important was
breaking down the walls of misunderstanding and mistrust. Not that we
will agree on everything, because no two people, let alone two nations,
agree on everything, but that we will see each other as fellow human
beings on a common journey, a journey that is filled with all of the
possibilities that are available to people around the world. And it’s no
accident that we have been focused on strengthening our
people-to-people engagement here in Vietnam and throughout Asia as a way
of building more and more of those relationships.
So over the past two decades, the Fulbright program has helped to
deepen the ties between our nations and it has, as we have just heard,
literally transformed the lives of over 8,000 American and Vietnamese
students, scholars, educators, and business people. And it has, indeed,
already produced some remarkable leaders, and I know it will continue to
produce remarkable leaders. Fulbright alumni are already major figures
in Vietnamese policies – deputy prime ministers, a foreign minister –
Minh, who I just met with, is a Fulbright alum. And others have gone on
to make important contributions in science, in business, in the arts,
and certainly in academia.
Now, some of the most accomplished alumni from all our scholarship
programs are here with us today, and their remarkable stories show what
is possible when you help talented young people get the skills and
connections they need to succeed. Now, I could literally tell you
hundreds of stories, but let me just talk about one example.
Do Minh Thuy, where is Do? Is Do Minh Thuy here? Ah, there you are,
Do. Well, Do used her Fulbright scholarship to study journalism at
Indiana University. And after graduating, she decided that her fellow
journalists in Vietnam deserved the chance to have access to the kinds
of skills and experiences she had. So she recruited some friends that
she’d met in Indiana to help her create a program for training and
mentoring young journalists. And today, her team has run workshops with
over 2,300 participants in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. So one person,
one scholarship has that kind of ripple effect in just one area of
Vietnamese life.
Dam Bich Thuy, is Dam Bich Thuy here? Yes. Another Fulbright Scholar
and a graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of
Pennsylvania is now one of the most prominent women in finance in
Southeast Asia. As vice chairwoman at ANZ Bank, she leads over 10,000
employees, and she has said that studying abroad helped her, and I
quote, “to approach the world and people from other cultures with a more
balanced, less biased view while maintaining my originality.” That’s a
beautiful way of saying that.
And I think that these two women and so many of you are
representative of the professionals and scholars who have studied in the
United States and then taken that experience and put it to work back
home. And even more young people are on the track to doing the same
thing. Today, there are more than 15,000 Vietnamese students in the
United States, and I believe this generation of students and scholars is
well positioned to make great contributions to Vietnam’s future. And it
won’t be just because of their education and their skill, it will be
because of the relationship and perspective that they forge and bring
home with them. And they then will be really at the foundation of
creating new opportunities, new ways of thinking, innovation,
entrepreneurship that will help so many other Vietnamese realize their
own dreams.
I like to say that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. There
are smart, hardworking people all over Vietnam, in fact all over the
world, who may not get the opportunity that some of you have had.
Therefore, it’s incumbent upon all of us to keep opening those doors of
opportunity, because walking through it may be a young man or young
woman who becomes a medical researcher and discovers a cure for a
terrible disease, becomes an entrepreneur and creates a product that
Vietnam exports all over the world and by doing so creates thousands of
jobs, becomes a professor who then creates the next and the next and the
next generation of those who contribute.
So we want to do more, and the United States is looking to do more to
increase the number of education exchanges. I just met with the Foreign
Minister, himself a Fulbrighter, to talk about what more we could do to
get even more young Vietnamese a chance to study, and we’ll be
exploring that and looking for ways to put that into action. But then I
invite you to please give us your ideas about what more we can do
working with you, working with the government, working with civil
society, working with business in Vietnam to create more of these
connections. Our ambassador, Ambassador David Shear is here, and if you
have ideas, please let our Embassy know.
Because one of the things I most admire about what Vietnam has
accomplished in the last 20 years is, among other things, the incredible
resilience and dedication to improving lives and society, the role that
women are playing in Vietnam – I go to many countries, and that is not
yet the case, but it’s happening right here in Vietnam, women and men
together building the new Vietnam – the emphasis on education which is
the passport to a better future, and constantly opening doors for higher
and higher levels of educational attainment. This is the best way that I
think Vietnam can prepare itself.
People often ask me: What can an individual, what can a nation do?
Well, the world we live in is unpredictable. There is no way that we
will know everything that will happen in the future. But the best
insurance policy is a good education at a great university like the
Foreign Trade University or one of the others here in Vietnam or abroad.
So we want, working with you and talking with the leaders of
educational institutions as well as your government and others in
society, to figure out how we can be a better partner when it comes to
opening those doors for Vietnamese young people.
So I wish all of you the very best as you continue your own careers
and professions. I hope that you stay in touch with those who you met
and worked with and studied with in the United States. I am inspired by
what you have accomplished in such a short period of time, and I look
forward to continuing this partnership between our countries. It’s one
that I think can be, as I have said before, a model and one that can
become better and better because we work at it together. It’s not the
United States or Vietnam, it is us working together to create that model
relationship and to provide the opportunities for both of our people to
live up to their own God-given potential. Thank you all very much.
(Applause.)
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