A former professor at my wife's institution who now works for the NSF dropped by her office after a talk.

[NNadir]

22. It is in some ways unfortunate that English has become an international...

...default language. Over the years in business meetings with Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, French, German, Telagu, Hindi, Gujarati and Norwegians, with all of whom I have interacted professionally, some more than others, I've felt at a disadvantage. They can "go offline" and I can't, although I can follow some French and some German.

My sons grew up hearing me complain about this and it's certainly inspired my youngest son to be multilingual. He does seem to have a talent for it.

My oldest guy spent some months in China recently and did pick up some Chinese (with his brother's help) but he's not as facile with languages.

If our best and brightest leave us and go abroad, and repatriate if sanity is restored here, America will be stronger. We are now at the point where China is the technological leader. In the scientific journals I read as much as half, sometimes more than half of the papers are by Chinese scientists. This is why China is so strong: They sent their best here to learn from us when we were the best. Perhaps I'm being optimistic, but maybe this can be a case of "what goes around comes around."

I do hope, perhaps naively, that a time will come when we're all humans first and nationals second. The problems the world faces, particularly environmentally do not recognize borders.