Exchange Students Find a New Way to Deal With Germans

A new pilot project called "Rent an American," sponsored by the German-American Institute at the University of Tübingen, which arranges for American exchange students to visit local schools.

One in four of the roughly 100 US exchange students in Tübingen has registered for the icebreaking initiative during the current semester.

[...]
Bashore visits an 11th-grade class. She introduces herself and passes
around her photos. A student asks the first question: "How do you feel
about Bush and the policies of his government?" When Bashore criticizes
the administration, another student adds: "No one supports him. He's a
liar. We're against his wars." The discussion moves to all the
hot-button issues: climate change, the death penalty, gun control,
Michael Moore, the Ku Klux Klan.

Bashore later says she was prepared for these kinds of questions, even
if they seemed overly direct and impolite by American standards.
Germans, she says, have "strong opinions," and they know what's wrong
and what's right -- just like the unpopular president in Washington.

[...]
Andrei Markovits, author of "Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes
America" -- and one of the most prominent US experts on Germany -- is
highly critical of German academics. "Anti-Americanism is the only
prejudice in Germany that increases with social status and higher
education," says Markovits. It is for this reason, he adds, that
"students are usually worse than your ordinary citizen."