By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

The UCLA campus celebrated International Education Week 2025 (November 17–21) with a wide array of events and activities organized by units throughout campus, including a philanthropic organization.

UCLA International Institute, December 18, 2025 — Late last month, 34 units across campus organized an active roster of over 40 events for International Education Week (IEW) 2025. Their participation, and the generous support of 21 campus cosponsors, affirmed the bedrock importance of international education, exchange and research at our university.

IEW programming was collectively organized by the UCLA College, the university’s professional schools, centers, student associations and even a philanthropic organization at UCLA, beginning just prior to and ending just after the official week itself (November 17–21).

In what can only be called perfect timing, one of the early events saw UCLA host the mid-year workshop of the STINT (Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) program, which brought together Swedish teaching fellows at universities across the United States to exchange notes about their teaching experiences, as well to learn about UCLA and hear a lecture on AI in education by the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center.

Led by the UCLA International Institute, the week offered Bruin students specific programming on study abroad, research funding, global careers and international exchange. The UCLA Study Abroad Office organized multiple information sessions on travel study and other study-abroad programs across different countries, while UCLA First To Go held a session on study abroad that specifically targeted first-generation Bruins. These sessions were complemented by a UCLA Powell Library book exhibit of travel and study abroad resources.

Scholarship information sessions spanned research funding offered by German foundations, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and the Boren Awards. Career events addressed public service careers following scholarship-funded study abroad, international development, the U.S. Peace Corps and the pedagogical skills needed to teach complex concepts.

One very creative contribution to IEW 2025 was a compendium of letters from undergraduate and graduate students of the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transnational Studies on the impact that studying a foreign language has on the learner. “Letters to the Future: Voices Across Time and Borders” features identical letters in English and a foreign language, each accompanied by an audio recording.

Throughout the week, the UCLA community had ample opportunities to experience the cultures of countries worldwide. International documentaries illuminated the lives of three individuals: a Vietnamese immigrant to the U.S. who returns to former refugee camps in Southeast Asia 30 years later to search for the graves of his wife and two children; a woman farmer and community organizer in Malawi who travels to the U.S. to speak to farmers about the impact of climate change; and an Israeli kibbutzim and his dramatic rescue, together with this family, immediately following the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. In addition, a screening of Luc Goddard’s feature film “La Chinoise” was organized by the UCLA Film & Television Archive as part of its Reel Politik film series.

The UCLA Martial Arts program offered free daily classes in the martial arts traditions of countries around the world, and the student-led Bruins Around the World and Loy Krathong Festival (cosponsored by Thais at UCLA, Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the ethnomusicology department) offered a mixture of student and professional performances and activities from an array of global cultural traditions.

Both the UCLA Fowler Museum and the Hammer Museum offered international art exhibits throughout the week, with the Fowler also offering a curator talk about its new exhibit, “Belongings: Changing Hands and Shifting Meanings in African Arts.”

Rounding out programming on the arts was a talk by Singaporean composer Zechariah Goh, “A Choral Odyssey;” a lecture on the idea of settler colonialism in Taiwanese modern literature; and a lecture on the Dōkatu bronze bells of medieval Japan organized by the Yanai Initiative for Japanese Humanities at UCLA.

The Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars, a regular IEW participant, contributed an engaging video of international students at UCLA and launched an online global “Cookbook of Cultures” of their recipes.

IEW programming also included many fascinating talks on international issues, including a lecture on Australian migration and asylum policies; a faculty panel discussion of the meaning of current U.S. immigration enforcement hosted by Women and Philanthropy at UCLA — representing the group’s first participation in IEW; and Armenian women’s lives in exile during the Armenian Genocide.

Among other talks and events on international issues were a daylong workshop associated with the newly published book, “Beyond Sanctuary,” about the policies and philosophies of sanctuary and asylum in U.S. and European democracies; lectures on the slavery in the Qin dynasty and the family in late imperial China, respectively; the origin of Arabic-language manuscripts in the UCLA Library collection; global health diplomacy; and the diasporic links between the military-led, heavy-industry focused industrialization of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s and 40s and that of South Korea 30 years later.

The week’s signature invite-only event at the UCLA University Club, “UCLA ‘Glocal’ Conversation: Advancing Global Education and Research in Turbulent Times,” offered a particularly timely discussion among campus leaders and faculty about the ways in which education and knowledge creation in general, and at UCLA specifically, are inherently international. These themes were again highlighted in the closing remarks of Cindy Fan, vice provost for international studies and global engagement, when she announced that the UCLA Global Advisors Council had just awarded 26 global education and global research grants to members of the UCLA community.

After a year of stressful events affecting international education, exchange and research, International Education Week 2025 proved to be a heartening demonstration of the continued commitment of UCLA to these essential components of a 21st-century education.

The International Institute thanks its campus cosponsors and participating units, together with all the students, faculty, staff and greater Los Angeles community members who joined us at IEW. We look forward to seeing everyone next year.

To read more about individual events, consult the calendar or online listings on the IEW 2025 website.

Published: Thursday, December 18, 2025