It is clear that the Trump gang is going after foreign students by revoking their student visas willy-nilly for the most trivial of reasons, while pretending that it is about fighting anti-Semitism.
“The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was crystal clear in his condemnation of antisemitism during his 2023 “60 Minutes” interview. “To be antisemitic is unjust,” the student activist plainly stated, denouncing anyone who uses antisemitic rhetoric when protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.
On Monday, Donald Trump’s administration arrested Mahdawi after sadistically luring him to an immigration office by implying his citizenship application process was complete. The excuse offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that Mahdawi needs to be deported to halt the spread of antisemitism. But Rubio’s team offered no evidence that Mahdawi is antisemitic, and did not bother to acknowledge his very public denunciation of antisemitism.
Similar accusations have been leveled at Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested for participating in the Gaza protests, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student on a visa from Turkey, arrested for signing an op-ed opposing the war. There has been no evidence produced of antisemitism from either, however. On the contrary, the Washington Post reports that an internal State Department memo written before Ozturk’s arrest found no evidence to support the accusation. Mikey Barat, Mahdawi’s Israeli friend, told The Intercept that while they “do not agree on everything,” Mahdawi “has denounced violence” and seeks “coexistence.”
Revoking visas of foreign students shows that Trump wants only American students to attend American universities, because he has also threatened to deny universities like Harvard the right to enroll foreign students.
Donald Trump has declared that Harvard University should no longer receive federal funds, calling it a “joke” that “teaches hate and stupidity”, while his administration said the pre-eminent US university could lose its ability to enrol foreign students.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said late on Wednesday that Harvard would lose its ability to enrol foreign students if it did not meet demands the Trump administration demands to share information on some visa holders. The department’s secretary, Kristi Noem, also announced the termination of two DHS grants to Harvard totalling more than $2.7m.
Noem said she wrote a letter to the university demanding records on what she called the “illegal and violent activities” of Harvard’s foreign student visa holders by 30 April. “And if Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students,” she said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Harvard said it was aware of Noem’s letter and that the university stood by its statement earlier in the week to “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights”, while saying it would comply with the law.
When you combine this threat of cutting research funding and eliminating the tax exemptions for universities with the persecution of of foreign students already here, it is clear that they are trying to curtail, if not outright eliminate, foreign students from attending US universities. So the question is: Why?
It is well-known in academia that foreign students tend to be highly competitive when compared to domestic US students when it comes to university admissions. Admission officers at US universities have to work very hard to get at least a reasonable percentage of US students in their student body. They do this by enrolling domestic students who, by most traditional educational measures, are less qualified than foreign students, making this a form of the despised affirmative action, but for the benefit of American students. The reason that foreign students dominate is not because they are intrinsically smarter but largely due to sheer statistics. If we take two countries from where the most foreign students apply, it is China and India. The combined population of just those two countries is eight times the US population, so if we take the same top fraction of students, there will be eight times the number of students from those two countries than there will be US applicants.
The situation is even worse because in those two countries (as was the case in many other countries including Sri Lanka), academically high achieving students tend to be admired and envied by their peers, unlike in the US where it is the athletes who are seen as the cool kids while the academic achievers tend to be disparaged as nerds. So naturally high achieving foreign students will dominate the applicant pool, and the very, very elite cohort will completely swamp domestic students. So it should be no surprise that university admission offices greatly struggle to prevent their institutions looking like a campus in another country
Like pretty much all of Trump’s actions, this is going to backfire badly. In the past, foreign students, especially those in sciences and engineering fields, wanted to come to US universities because many of the best research universities were here and they had the funds to offer stipends and scholarships. After they graduated, many stayed here and continued to contribute to the intellectual life, either as college faculty or in institutes or in businesses. Now with the cuts to university funding and the unfriendly atmosphere for them, those same students will go elsewhere, and end up strengthening the economies of other countries.
As with the dismantling of the industrial base in the US, the undermining of higher education in the US is going to make it very hard to rebuild once the Trump madness becomes part of history.
every day lately, I’m reminded of that meme/viral post that goes something to the effect of “I’m not smart enough for there to be so many people dumber than me”
Another reason for encouraging foreign students, at least for UK universities and surely for US ones as well, is simple capitalism -- they’ll pay more. You can charge pretty much what you like and more than “enough” foreign students will find a way to pay it.
My own university was approached in the 1980s by the Hong Kong government, who already financed a LOT of Chinese students to come here, with an idea that they would become a university solely for HK students. As I heard it the admininstration were all fully on board with it, until the UK government said “sure, you can do that… but you can’t call yourself a university any more and you can’t award degrees any more if you do”. The idea was shelved.
I can’t help thinking the world will be a better place when people will say “I went to Harvard you know”, and the response will be one of pity… “Couldn’t get in anywhere decent?”. I give it about 50 years.
I keep seeing blog posts and skeets and comments along the lines of “the US is going to lose the trust of its allies and its position as de facto top nation”. And I keep wondering what the people making those comments are smoking that’s preventing them from seeing that it’s too late for that and it’s already happened. I personally know who’ve made business decisions to the material detriment of the US within the last few weeks, decisions they would not have made this time last year, things that have gone from being unthinkable to being thinkable to being policy in the space of a season -- and I’ve not exactly got a hotline to the financial powerhouses. I’d heard the idea that the US would lose its preeminence in the 21st century, but I was sceptical… it’s grimly fascinating to watch it inflict the end on itself, gleefully.
Also, it seems that Trump does not want the nearly $100 billion in taxes that immigrants are paying per annum:
Trump is punishing immigrants for following the rules -- The federal government’s assault on immigrants is pushing them to live in the shadows.
Turning IRS Agents to Deportation Will Reduce Public Revenues
Another puzzling facet of this ongoing train crash: those simian “Techbros” who love so much their even simian-er Prez depend on scientific and engineering talent to run their rancid enterprises.
Now it seems they are doing their level best to destroy the very pool of talent they so much need. Universities under attack, foreign students up to PhD level discouraged, if not detained. Not to mention the 360° attack on any country not American.
Who the hell is going to work for them in the future? Where are they going to find the people?
Yes they see themselves as great lords at the top with masses of serfs at the bottom, but their riches and livelihood are predicated on a healthy society and its robust knowledge structure: they absolutely need that, and yet they are busy disintegrating it.
So dude, whaaaat.
US science is as good as it is because a) lots of money, and b) foreign talent. Now both will dry up. Yay, America!
Im not sure thats the main motivation -- They arent doing it at the levels they could -- It seems to be more of the do not daresay a word critical of the leader, the party or the policy or else type of warning and a few high profile cases are all thats needed to make people fall in line , especially immigrants.(But sure keeping out people with a slightly darker skin hue is a happy bonus)
I’m hoping maga is just the nostrum that wakes up the non-voters in this country who there’s far too many of: (90 million). My concern is the inveterate liar-in-chief will use his dictatorial behavior, like defying the supine court, or any court for that matter, to usher in his oligarchical dictatorship. I think Robert M Hutchins predicted magats when he wrote this in 1951:
“We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda,
private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. A
prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand
and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot
be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but
they can be bamboozled. The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of
the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen
twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either democracy must fall
prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people
must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can
appraise the issues for themselves.”
So far his worshippers in congress, whose complete lack of probity, seem only willing to uphold the con in constitution, and many in his maga-flock are willing to accept “…the oligarchical assumption that the possession of wealth signifies superior intelligence and virtue.” As his behavior becomes more predatory and provoking, he may be looking to justify a way to place Marshall law in effect to prevent elections that pose a threat to him, as he is well aware of his poll numbers.
Martial law, and supine court was intended.
@Jörg:
That reminds me of something I read years ago now…
Basically many years back, a by-law was passed in the City of Toronto forbidding people working for the school board from inquiring about a student’s family’s immigration status. The stated purpose was that it was better for the city as a whole to ensure that children of ‘illegal’ immigrants still got an education (including hopefully being kept off the streets and too busy to get involved with gangs) than it was to get the frankly marginal increase in immigration enforcement that might result. Also, this policy was made quite public, because if people didn’t know it was safe for their children to go to school, they’d be less likely to take advantage of it.
jenorafeuer @9,
interesting, thanks