Transitions Abroad Magazine at 25

Dr. Clay Hubbs, the Founding Editor, Reflects Upon the Magazine, its Contributors, and its Readers

In March 1977 I announced that “Transitions [will be] a new kind of travel publication. Its purpose is to provide the non-touring traveler with an up-to-date review of educational travel and study abroad.” While the initial audience would consist largely of students and educators, future issues would be directed to all who travel to learn (an audience that has grown to nearly 50,000). The title, I explained, was meant to suggest the changes that happen to us as a result of immersion in a foreign language and culture.

In the first issue’s lead story — a report on a stay at a residential high school for adults in Norway, where learning the language was the first necessity — Katherine Lesser described her response: “Bombarded by new sights and sounds and ideas, one cannot, if sensitive to them, remain rigid in one’s own ideas. It is a mind-expanding experience.”

Also in that first issue, Gary Langer, then a freshman at the Univ. of New Hampshire, spelled out what I meant by “the non-touring traveler” to whom the new publication was directed. In an article describing a visit to Jerusalem in 1976, Langer wrote about his stay at the guesthouse of an eccentric Armenian. Only travelers stay at Mr. A’s, wrote Langer; tourists do not:

“The distinction is simple: Tourists are those who bring their homes with them wherever they go, and apply them to whatever they see. They are closed to experience outside of the superficial. Travelers left home at home, bringing only themselves and a desire to see and hear and feel and take in and grow and learn.”

Travel that is mind-expanding, travel that involves learning, travel that changes us — this then would be the focus of Transitions Abroad over the next 25 years. Formal educational programs would be at the center of it — after all, I was a college teacher and it was primarily for students that my colleagues and I started the publication. We would, however, cover all the opportunities for international education, including work and travel and, of course, living or immersion in another culture. We would not try to limit our readership to students.

For that first issue, Lily von Klemperer — not only my mentor but also the doyenne of international education — contributed two pieces. One was about a Pratt Institute film professor who went to France to make a film and later went back with his students, and one was about attending a cooking school in Florence run by a great Italian cook (whose book I still rely on), Giuliano Bugialli.

The editorial mix of ready-to-use information on educational travel, study, work, and living abroad has not changed in the first 25 years — a testament either to the editor’s “vision” or to his inflexibility. What has changed from year to year and issue to issue is the way the mix is divided: Transitions Abroad introduced the concept of “responsible” travel — culturally responsible and environmentally responsible — in the early ’80s. Since that time we’ve drawn increasing attention to individuals and organizations that support sustainable tourism and give something back to the host community. Over the years we’ve also devoted more space to work abroad, particularly to volunteering.

For this special anniversary issue I asked the contributing editors if they wished to share examples of their own of “mind-expanding” experiences of the kind that Transitions Abroad has featured over the years. Here’s mine:

In the early ’60s my wife and I decided to take a year off from study (I was then in journalism, she was in history) and follow the footsteps of a cultural hero, Alexander the Great. We set out from Cambridge, England with our 3-year-old son Gregory in a second-hand VW van and Herodotus as our guide to the ancient world (this was long before Lonely Planet). We hoped we had enough canned food stashed under our makeshift bed to last for several months, plus enough to trade for fresh produce along the way. (Alas, Spam was not popular.)

On the ferry from Spain to Morocco we learned that John Kennedy had been assassinated. At that time America was widely admired and Kennedy loved — which at least partly explained the warmth and generosity that greeted us everywhere we went, from Morocco to India.

A lot was going on in the countries along the way — from border wars to military coups — and we had many adventures. For me, however, the impact of our voyage did not come from single incidents but, as we went deeper into the Arab world, from the gradual realization of how limited and distorted by cultural bias our perception of this world had been. When we arrived in Persepolis we heard from the guards around the abandoned site that Alexander was remembered locally not as a hero but as the destroyer of a great empire.

My most lasting impression of our voyage to the place where Western civilization and its religions began was that people who were vastly different in origin and upbringing and worldview could not only co-exist peacefully but appreciate and learn from each other, just like Gary Langer’s fellow guests at Mr. A’s. This was the inspiration for Transitions Abroad, and this has been its emphasis. Finally, it’s not a question of where we travel or even why we travel, but how we travel — with an open mind and a willingness to change — that distinguishes readers of Transitions Abroad.

And then there was September 11. Because we couldn’t stop for the world, it unkindly came to us. More than any other single event in American history the attacks revealed to us how interconnected the world truly is. Americans on the whole are generous, and there was a tremendous outpouring of support for the victims. But no industrialized nation is as stingy as us when it comes to the disadvantaged in the rest of the world, where half of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Americans think we are contributing 10 percent of our gross national product to development aid. In fact, our contribution is .10 percent, or about eight times less than The Netherlands. Americans think we are liked in the rest of the world because of our generosity. In fact, a recent Pew survey found that while 52 percent of Americans believe we are liked because we do “a lot of good,” only 12 percent of Latin Americans and only 21 percent of all foreigners agreed with our assessment. (I’m not sure if the poll, cited by Paul Krugman in the New York Times of January 1, was taken before or after the disaster in Argentina, which is largely a result of the continued insistence by the U.S. on a failed monetary policy.)

Has the country changed as a result of the September 11 attacks? Yes, more students are going abroad than ever before and more are going to Developing World countries than ever before (there are clear signs that the interest in study abroad jumped significantly after September 11). And, as Transitions Abroad has shown (the average age of our readers is now nearly 50), as students go, so goes America. Travel for learning or “life enhancement” has become the most popular and fastest-growing form of nonbusiness travel.

The author with his family in 1964 after returning from years of adventures
in England, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.