From there he went to academia, a world so restricted to foreigners in Japan that there are said to be fewer tenured foreign professors in the entire country than there are in most major American cities.
"But to be attractive for foreign professors to teach here, you have to have attractive salaries".
Mr. Lewis was organizing 40 foreign professors to study election conditions before the July 2 presidential balloting.
As institutions in Western countries continue to suffer from budget cuts, academics looking for opportunities farther afield are finding that China is welcoming foreign professors with open arms.
Born in 1807 in Port Royal, Va., he originally attended the University of Virginia, but was expelled after participating in a protest against foreign professors.
"We are going to see more foreign professors coming to China," said Wang Huiyao, director general of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.
But it is changing, now recruiting foreign professors for tenured positions, admitting more international students and increasing the proportion of women faculty members.
Except for a few foreign professors, he is the only one in the 80-member Todai law faculty who is not a graduate of the faculty.
With the foreign professors came new pedagogical ideas especially those of Friedrich Froebel and Johann Friedrich Herbart and also new ideologies, foremost among them positivism, which flourished in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
Many of the university's financial problems stemmed from a "preoccupation" with offering "the most attractive possible living conditions" for prospective hires, especially foreign professors, the Cour des Comptes found.
That can mean everyone from refugees and women escaping domestic violence to foreign professors attending academic conferences to people who've simply lost their wallets and need somewhere to stay for the night.
