Contributor: Once, international students feared Beijing's anger. Now Trump is the threat
American universities have long been feared that the Chinese government has prevented students from its country from frequenting establishments that separate sensitive political lines from Beijing.
Universities still fear this consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the last punishment has been inflicted on emissaries of academic scapegoats of the Trump administration, it is our own government which represents the threat.
In a May 22 letterInternal security secretary Kristi Noem announced that it had revoked the certification of the Harvard University student and exchange program, which means that the thousands of university international students must be transferred immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer register future international students.
Noem quoted Harvard's failure to hand over the disciplinary files of international students in response to a previous letter and, with concern, the Trump administration of “reducing the evils of anti-Americanism” on the campus. Among the most alarming requirements of this last missive, it is to provide Harvard with any video of “any protest activity” by any international student in the past five years.
Harvard immediately heard Noem and his department and other agencies, rightly calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the first amendment” and in a few hours, a judge made a temporary prohibition order against the revocation.
“Let this serve as a warning to all university and university institutions across the country”, wrote On X on punishment. And Tuesday, the administration interviewed interviews for all new student visas.
This is not how a free country treats its schools – or international visitors who attend it.
Noem's warning will undoubtedly be heard strong and strong. Indeed, the universities – which depend on the tuition fees of international students – have already had reasons to worry that they lose access to international students for moving the censored government officials.
In 2010, Beijing Recognition revoked Accreditation of the University of Calgary in China, which means that Chinese students of the Canadian school suddenly risked paying a diploma of little at home. The reason? The granting of the University of an honorary diploma in the Dalai Lama the previous year. “We have offended our Chinese partners by bringing the Dalai Lama, and we have work to solve this problem,” said a spokesperson said.
Beijing restored Recognition more than a year later, but many Chinese students had already left. Damage caused.
Likewise, when UC San Diego welcomed Dalai Lama as a speaker at the start in 2017, a punishment followed. The Chinese scholarship board suspended Financing for academics intended to study at the UCSD, and an article In State Media Outlet, Global Times recommended that Chinese authorities “do not recognize diplomas or diploma certificates issued by the university”.
This type of direct punishment does not occur very frequently. But the threat still exists, and this creates the fear that the administrators take into account when they decide the functioning of their universities.
American universities must now fear that they are also undergoing this penalty, but on an even greater scale: revocation of access not only to students in China, but to all international students. It is a huge potential loss. In Harvard, for example, international students represent 27% of total registrations.
Whether they recognize it publicly or not, university leaders probably plan to adjust their behavior to avoid seeing the schooling funds for international students.
Will our colleges and universities increase censorship and surveillance of international students? Avoid inviting the beginning speakers disadvantaged by the Trump administration? Press the academic departments against the hiring of teachers whose comments from social media or research areas will attract the attention of representatives of the Mercuria government?
And, just as disturbing, will they be ready to admit that they are now doing these calculations? Unlike direct sanctions from the Trump or Beijing administration, this scary effect is probably largely invisible.
Harvard could survive without the tuition fees of international students. But a large number of other universities could not. The nation as a whole would also feel their loss: during the academic year of 2023-24, international students contributed A record of $ 43.8 billion in the American economy.
And these students – who have uprooted their lives for the promise of what American education offers – are those who will suffer the most, because they undergo weeks or months of panic and upheavals while being used as pawns in this campaign to punish the highest EDs.
If the Trump administration seeks to eliminate “anti-American”, it can start by probe its own behavior in recent months. Freedom of expression is one of the most expensive values ​​in our country. Censorship, surveillance and punishment for government criticisms do not belong here.
Sarah McLaughlin is a principal researcher on world expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of the next book “Authorities of the Academy: how the internationalization of higher education and censorship without borders threatens freedom of expression. “”
