The Trump administration's threat to revoke foreign student visas exemplifies a broader assault on intellectual openness and U.S. higher education's global appeal, risking long-term damage to its reputation as a welcoming, world-class academic destination.
Graduating students at Harvard University, on May 24, 2025. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“You are our classmates and friends, our colleagues and mentors, our partners in the work of this great institution. Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world.”
--Message from Harvard President Alan Garber to the Harvard Community after U.S. president Trump threatened to revoke visas for foreign students.
The anti-science, anti-intellectual thrust of Trump’s second term in office manifests itself daily in different and dispiriting ways. One of the latest blows was directed at foreign students at Harvard. In yet another attention-grabbing stunt, Trump threatened to revoke the university’s ability to certify student visas for reasons of personal pique. He has expressed his displeasure at the lack of support his policies have received from the institution. This was followed a few days later by Senator Marco Rubio suggesting that Chinese nationals be subject to intense vetting and barred if they work in sensitive fields or have ties to the Communist Party of China. The application process at US embassies and consulates in China has ground to a halt.
Regarding Harvard specifically, the intemperate and malicious threat, which will be challenged in court, revokes the university’s ability to offer visas to students from abroad, using the example of Harvard to serve notice to other colleges. What’s more, it’s a slap in the face to the legions of students around the world eager to study in the U.S. who are, in effect, being told they are no longer welcome.
The courts may reject the unprincipled bullying by fiat of the sitting president, but the damage will linger long the courts adjudicate and after he leaves office. A hard slap in the face undoes the hundred of handshakes that preceded it.
While America never really lived up to its founding rhetoric and original mission as a self-styled bastion of democracy, equality and fair play, it has, nonetheless, long been a beacon of learning, an exemplary educational city on the hill.
Just as China can be said to have served as the world’s factory floor for its manufacturing prowess, it would not be entirely unfair to say the U.S. has functioned as the world’s campus.
Despite all the ups and downs of U.S. politics over the years, from the ideological ravages of the McCarthy period to the insupportable war in Vietnam, from the unbridled greed of U.S. corporations, to the uncalled for war in Iraq, and other foreign policy debacles in recent decades, many of the best and brightest minds from around the world made the choice to study in the U.S.
Following in the footsteps of Albert Einstein and other great minds seeking the separate and sheltered peace of a U.S. campus, millions have flocked to the U.S. knowing they will be able to pursue their studies in an inviting environment without fear or political recrimination.
For a foreign student or scholar to leave the familiar comforts of home to study in the U.S. has always been a bold, life-changing move — something Americans, who study abroad in much fewer numbers, might not fully appreciate. It takes a great leap of faith, not to mention intensive preparation and considerable financial investment, to acquire a tertiary education in another country.
For decades now, youth in China and around the world have studied hard, studying English, cramming for tests and saving up precious money to study in the U.S. This is expressly not because they are enamored by the politics of any particular administration, Republican or Democrat, but to live a life relatively free of political considerations, to study, explore, engage, examine, question, debate and discuss things in a collegial environment without worries or fear.
Providing a supportive environment to question the world and get to the underlying roots of how the world works under the protection of free speech without political retribution has long been one of America’s best attributes. Higher education is an intellectual superpower that attracts the world even though the material superpower has stumbled, and lost its way, losing its luster along with it.
The opportunity to learn, to pursue one’s most profound interests, to plunge into one’s studies free from recrimination, to elevate oneself through scholarship is a gift. To do so in a truly cosmopolitan setting that welcomes different people and different voices from around the world is rare, despite the interconnected globalism of the present day.
Even for students who come from countries whose governments are at odds with Washington, DC, the promise of a U.S. college education continues to shine. Until recent weeks, foreign students have been free to strongly disagree with U.S. politics, and say anything they want about the U.S. president, or any other politician without fear, so long as they don’t advocate violence.
The sparkling attraction of the U.S. has something to do with U.S. prosperity, but little or nothing to do with the political infighting of the host country. More to the point, the U.S. has established outstanding centers of educational excellence that offer young men and women of all backgrounds a comfortable, tolerant setting to understand how the world works, from astronomy to area studies, from math to music.
The yearning for education, to pursue one’s interests and follow one’s curiosity, to lift oneself up by the bootstraps, to acquire skills, to discover new things and to follow one’s passions knows no national boundaries.
There’s long been a profound asymmetry in the number of U.S. students in China compared to the number of Chinese students in the U.S., a trend that has only sharpened in recent years to the point where you have several hundreds on one side, with several hundreds of thousands on the other.
This is not a simple matter, attributable to the superior offerings of U.S. universities, for China can rightly boast excellent study centers, and, among other indices of academic prowess, it produces more mathematicians and engineers than anywhere in the world.
Part of what makes a U.S. education special, and arguably more advantaged educationally, is precisely its cosmopolitan nature. Unlike China, where local and foreign students are segregated by different dorms and dining halls, American colleges mix things up from the very start. It’s not uncommon for an American farmboy to find he has a foreign roommate freshman year, or for a Brooklyn girl to find herself together in class, lunch or lab in the company of young scholars from far-flung ports.
There are endless opportunities for extra-curricular mixing out of class as well, with guardrails and guidance in place for students who have a hard time adjusting to the sudden lack of supervision.
What Trump has done, starting with his attack on Harvard, is to knock one of the pillars of a cosmopolitan education by rejecting non-citizens from the student body.
One certain result of the mindless jingoism prevalent in America today is that despite fantastic physical plants, well-equipped labs, expansive lawns, sports facilities, abundant libraries and legions of skilled instructors, fewer Chinese students will be electing to study in the U.S.
And among those brave souls hardy enough to withstand the headwinds and seek an education in the U.S. despite the spiteful policies being put in place, they will likely find visas difficult to obtain and residence difficult to maintain.
The vast amount of time and effort involved in a college education or graduate school career requires a stable environment and predictable rules of engagement. The flip-flopping of U.S. policy, rule by fiat, and worst of all, a mean-spirited contempt for all things foreign have all conspired to take the blush off the rose.
If present trends continue, U.S. higher education will lose its mojo. The MAGA crowd, driven by resentment and knee-jerk nationalism, seems bent on denying access, denying opportunity and diminishing institutions that once attracted the best and brightest from across the world.
Once a shining city on the hill for those seeking an education from afar, America is starting to look like a daunting castle. There are political landmines and ideological moats, towering walls of prejudice and treacherous gauntlets that make the city on the hill harder and harder to reach.
The decline is happening fast enough to witness in real time as the U.S. trades excellency for isolation, cosmopolitanism for provincialism. Dubious political loyalties and lip service in praise of the leader on high have been elevated higher than fealty to the truth.
It is said that empires are not destroyed from without but from within, and the Trump administration, by demoniacal design or criminal incompetence, is doing just that. The gratuitous dismantling of America’s best intellectual traditions, long-held legal protections of individual rights, and traditions of free speech proceeds apace.
Today Harvard, tomorrow Columbia and Cornell. The logic of the incumbent administration is based on the domino theory—knock down one well-positioned tile and watch all the others tumble, tremble or fall into line.
