Northwestern Now – Mohamed Abdelfattah 
Brian Edwards, Crown Professor in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University, has been addressing what he calls the “paradox of American attitudes toward multilingualism” and is involved in a major congressional initiative to expand language learning in the United States. Edwards participated in the writing of the first report on the nation’s language capacity in four decades. He has been involved with K-12 world language programs in Chicago and Evanston and has called for an increase in Arabic in Chicago Public Schools. “At a time when some want us to retrench into an America-first nativism, it’s all the more important to celebrate our multiple connections to the world,” Edwards said.(more)