AAC&U officers and staff regularly travel throughout the country, and occasionally the world, to speak and consult at AAC&U member schools through seminars, institutes, and workshops as well as in more informal gatherings. AAC&U staff also regularly speak on the value of liberal education at various media and public affairs events. These meetings are an opportunity for the membership to influence the direction of AAC&U's initiatives. We look forward to seeing you the next time we are on your campus.

Vice president for communications and public affairs, Debra Humphreys, represented AAC&U at two recent meetings following up on the Supreme Court decisions on the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies. She attended the School Law Institute sponsored by Teachers College, Columbia University, on July 15, 2003, and a meeting coordinated by the Harvard Civil Rights Project on July 16, 2003, titled “The Supreme Court Decision and The Choices for Higher Education.” Campus planning in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action will be featured at AAC&U's upcoming annual meeting. To see AAC&U's amicus curae briefs, visit www.aacu.org/about/perspectives.cfm. Also see the Statement on “Diversity and Democracy: The Unfinished Work” issued by AAC&U in cooperation with other higher education organizations after the decisions.

The week of June 23, Vice President for Education and Quality Initiatives Andrea Leskes attended the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference on higher education as AAC&U's representative. "Meeting of Higher Education Partners: World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE) +5," was a chance for the international community to take stock of progress in the five years since the UNESCO WCHE in 1998. Approximately 400 people, ten of whom were from the U.S, attended the meeting. “There was an interesting tension at many levels between respecting diversity and fostering unity: at the level of setting international principles, at the level of institutional types, at the level of public versus private versus for-profit education, at the level of institutional autonomy and local needs,” Leskes observed. For more information on UNESCO and education, visit www.unesco.org/education/index.shtml. For more information about AAC&U's global issues, visit www.aacu.org/issues/globallearning/.