Trump against foreign students: A self-defeating move

AS PART of its proclaimed anti-Semitic policies, Nazi Germany took steps to “cleanse” its institutions of higher revolution from Jewish students and professors in the 1930s.

Many of these Jewish academicians and scientists – including theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein – had no choice but to leave Germany and to emigrate to countries that were willing to accept them, including the US where they landed in top positions in the country’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard.

In fact, some of these Jewish immigrants ended up working for the so-called Manhattan Project, to develop the atomic bomb that helped the US and its allies defeat Nazi Germany and win World War II.

That these educated immigrants played such decisive roles in advancing US interests highlighted one of America’s greatest competitive strengths: its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest minds – talented young people who bring their intellectual capital and innovation to the US.

From that perspective, the decision by the US Department of Homeland Security on May 22 to bar international students from attending Harvard University would certainly seem to be short-sighted and self-defeating; it runs contrary to America’s core interest in having an opportunity to educate the world’s brightest young people and utilise their talents. After all, immigrants have started more than half of America’s privately held startups valued at US$1 billion or more.

The Trump administration’s decision to yank Harvard University’s authorisation to enrol foreign students would mean that the future of some 7,000 young people – or close to 30 per cent of Harvard’s student body – would be in disarray. They would have to leave the country, or perhaps find another US college that would take them.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Trump’s move to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, but the president has since launched further attacks on the university, as well as paused the scheduling of new student visa interviews across US universities.

The Homeland Security Department said that Harvard had failed to create a safe campus environment for students, especially the Jewish, and alleged that many “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” on campus were foreign students.

The Trump administration has already pulled billions of dollars in federal research funding from Harvard University and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, citing anti-Semitism and policies of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The majority of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programmes, and many of them assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate students. Kicking them out of Harvard will interfere with scientific research projects and disrupt teaching.

In reality, most of these students are not involved in politics, and certainly not in anti-Israeli activity. A good number of them are actually Israelis. Punishing them by expulsion does not make any sense, including when one considers that some of them would have remained in the US and contributed to the country’s economic growth.

Indeed, non-citizens in the US account for more than half of doctoral degrees in artificial intelligence-related fields, with many of them going on to work for US companies or starting their own.

According to the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants have founded or co-founded two-thirds of the top AI companies in the US, and 70 per cent of the full-time graduate students in AI-related fields are foreign students. The US should welcome such students with open arms, not banish them.