Ask Joseph Lurie, the executive director of International House, what international students contribute to Berkeley, and he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms.
“Many of our residents have said that personal encounters with other cultures have been the most profound experience they’ve had—intellectually and emotionally—at Cal,” he says.
I-House, as the imposing Spanish-Moorish building at the T-section of Piedmont and Bancroft Avenues is known, is in the business of making sure those encounters happen.
The independent, self-supporting residential and cultural center opened in 1930 as the second stage of a larger movement. The first International House opened in New York City in 1924. Its beginning is now an I-House legend. Harry Edmonds, a young man working at the New York YMCA, offered a casual “good morning” to a Chinese student he passed on the steps of the Columbia University library. The student exclaimed, “I’ve been in New York three weeks, and you’re the first person who’s spoken to me.”
The encounter prompted Edmonds to investigate the living conditions of foreign students in New York. The isolation he found drove him to open what is now known as the “mother” International House, with funding and support from John D. Rockefeller Jr. Three more official International Houses, in Berkeley, Chicago, and Paris, followed, and the movement has inspired similar student housing and cultural centers around the world.
When the Berkeley I-House opened, again with funding from Rockefeller, it became the first coeducational residence west of New York, a distinction that was not without controversy in its day. Today, students of more nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and cultural backgrounds live together at I-House than in any housing center in the country save one: the mother house in New York.
About 40 percent of the Berkeley I-House’s 580 residents are from the United States, a figure that surprises many on campus. Says Lurie, “This place has been here almost 70 years, and still a very large section of campus has the idea only foreign students live here. They don’t perceive themselves as being part of the international community.”
The remaining 60 percent come from an average of 60 to 70 countries. (This year, if you count dual nationalities, it’s 89.) Seventy percent of I-House residents are graduate students and visiting scholars.
I-House was founded on the idea that friendships can transcend nationality, race, and religion. To this end, its residents share rooms with students from other countries and eat meals together.
An International Education
A trip to the I-House dining room can be an international education in itself. In China, Lurie points out, people generally do not serve vegetables raw. Here in California, raw vegetables are a staple of salad bars. Some Chinese residents of I-House adopt this new habit. Others adapt it to their tastes. They put the raw cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots in a bowl, add a little hot water from the tea dispenser, stir in some soy sauce, and head for the microwave.
Feeding 600 people a day is challenging enough; satisfying 60 different cultural tastes and taboos is impossible. But part of the International House experience is exposing people to different tastes, whether food to eat or food for thought.
Of the many international students we interviewed for these stories, including students from the United States, the ones we talked to who lived at I-House seemed to have made friends across the widest number of cultures.
Peter Thottam, a third-year law student from Los Angeles who’s lived at I-House three years, says his experience there has complemented his studies at the Boalt School of Law.
“I’m going to be working in Silicon Valley,” says Thottam, who has a job lined up with a law firm specializing in high technology issues. “The industry is going global because of the Internet. Living here gives a human face to everything that’s happening on the Internet.”
Mathias Keudel, an I-House alumnus from Germany who received his MBA in 1997, also found the connections he made at I-House furthered his career. (He now markets compact discs over the Internet for a global entertainment company.) But more than his career, I- House affected his life.
“The experience changed me,” says Keudel. “I regard a lot of cultures in different ways now. And I made so many friends here and at the business school from all over the world. It will take me my whole life to visit them all!”
More than a few alumni met their future spouses at I-House, which is not so surprising, given that many residents are at a typical age for courtship. What is extraordinary, says Lurie, is how many of these relationships cross cultures and religions. One couple—his ancestral roots in China, hers, the Netherlands—asked Lurie to actually marry them. They figured since I-House had brought them together, they might as well make it official. Lurie got himself sworn in as a deputy marriage commissioner for a day; the wedding photo graces a wall in his office.
A Magnificent Argument
International students have not always found such an open-minded and tolerant climate, even in Berkeley.
In the 1920s, Berkeley residents protested the construction of International House, and not just because men and women would be living under the same roof. In a time when fraternities didn’t admit non-Caucasians, I-House planned to bring together not just men and women but people of different races and ethnicities. And it would bring them together in a prominent site on Piedmont Avenue’s fraternity row, a setting Harry Edmonds himself chose as a way to deliver his message of tolerance.
Today, Lurie describes I-House as a “magnificent argument for affirmative action.” Because it is a private, nonprofit institution, it is not bound by the restrictions imposed by Proposition 209. It deliberately sets out to admit residents from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and economic groups, from both the United States and from overseas. As a general rule, it tries not to have more than 20 students from any one country.
Does everyone live together in harmony? Not on your life. You get arguments over everything from world politics to smoking policies.
“If everyone at I-House agreed about everything, there’d be no need for this institution,” says Lurie. “It is here to wrestle with difference, and hopefully come out with something bigger and better.”
Lurie has overseen such stirring experiences as the time East and West Germans sat before the big television screen in the Great Hall and led their fellow residents in cheering the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or the time when 600 people packed the I-House auditorium while Chinese residents relayed news by phone and fax directly from Tiananmen Square.
“The opportunity to put a face on a country,” says Lurie, “is a very, very powerful experience.”
Join the Community
You do not have to live at International House to take advantage of the many opportunities it offers to experience other cultures. I-House regularly holds events that are open to the public. In February, for example, it will showcase Black History Month, culminating in an African heritage dinner and a gospel music concert. Its annual spring festival, featuring music, food, traditional dress, and storytelling from a spectrum of cultures, attracts thousands. Lectures on current world events can draw a cozy audience of 10 or an auditorium-filling crowd in the hundreds.
Members of the campus and larger community are also welcome to participate in weekly activities such as language tables, where, for the cost of dinner, you can practice your Chinese, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, or Spanish. For a small fee, members of the public can also attend regularly scheduled aerobics, social dance, and folk dance classes alongside I-House residents.
For a six-month or one-year fee (ranging from $10 to $25, depending on whether you are a new or continuing student, staff member, or visiting scholar), you can become an I- House member and take part in the above activities as well as late-night “coffee hour” discussions and Sunday movies. You’ll also receive the monthly International House Program News. I-House has about 400 nonresident members, in addition to the thousands of nonmembers who attend single events.
For more information about membership, events, and activities, call 642-9460 or consult the I-House Web site (www- ihouse.berkeley.edu:7002).
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