Why is 27 percent of Harvard’s total student body foreign when there are hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans who could fill those spots instead?
Of all the questions raised by the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement on Thursday that it would no longer issue visas to foreign students at Harvard (a move that has now been temporarily blocked by a judge), that’s the one that is the most existential. It forces us to ask: What—and who—are American universities actually for?
As the proud beneficiary of an international education (I earned my graduate degrees in the UK), I have no standing whatsoever to campaign against foreign students. Nor do I wish to. The primary purpose of any university should be truth-seeking, and truth-seeking knows no borders.
But I do think these numbers—and Harvard is hardly unique—point to a real problem: Elite American universities are reluctant to be seen as American, or to prioritize American interests, even as they happily accept American taxpayer dollars. Rather, they increasingly cast themselves as global universities, educating “global citizens.”