Lawrence Summers loves fomenting juicy debates: women’s math skills may innately trail men’s; global warming is a “profound error.” His latest foray: English is “the global language” and better machine translation makes foreign languages “less essential.”

It’s reassuring to know that his opinion was overruled by the six panelists, including me, whom the New York Times invited to contribute a personal perspective for the online “Room for Debate” discussion: Does learning a language other than English matter? Of course it does! And it seems that the vast majority of the more than 300 comments posted in the first 24 hours agree. It’s not just about learning to speak a language; it’s about cultural nuances, humility, cognitive development, improved language arts, and being able to work across borders to solve big and small problems. Teachers, diplomats, entrepreneurs and business people offered their individual perspectives, but they all agree.

One these was PR legend Harold Burson, with whom I had the good fortune to visit when I was in NYC yesterday. Harold was at the forefront of global expansion in the 1970s as he steadily grew Burson-Marsteller into the international powerhouse it remains today with a mixture of cross- culturally competent PR professionals and in-depth local knowledge and language skills. He told me that he wholeheartedly agrees with my premise and referenced an article that claimed 60 percent of the essence of a negotiation is missed even when served by a competent interpreter. More.

See: The Huffington Post