Bush hopes the experiment will produce scores of young Michiganders who are fluent in Arabic, and he wants the program to be copied nationwide, said Robert Slater, director of the U.S. Department of Defense's national security education program...Michigan State University will begin planning Michigan's Arabic program this summer with a small federal grant...Slater and his colleagues at the Department of Defense said that the language programs will have the greatest chance of success in cities where the language they're trying to teach is already spoken by a large number of people...Language educators in Michigan and across the country said they are thrilled with the new interest from the government. Not since the height of the Cold War has so much attention been paid to foreign language study, they said.

Imad Hamad, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee [said] "This initiative is gate-opening. It's going to open a lot of people's minds and eyes."