Here is a great report

by Dartmouth student Joe Malchow of Joe’s Dartblog on the visit to Dartmouth of the French consul to New England. The Frenchman seems quite impressed with how much “soft power” the EU (and, by extension, France) has compared to the U.S.
Joe asked just the right questions, to the dismay of the head of the French department, the legendary John Rassias. If you read the whole thing, you’ll see that the Dartmouth French department has at least one professor with a strong sense of what constitutes healthy discourse.