Reply to What is the endgame for current attack on elite unis + international students?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was a foreign student advisor in a large East Coast university for many years and am appalled by the open and unapologetic attack on foreign students. I have thought long and hard about this issue and have some ideas on what it's really about. Sorry for the long post, but I hope some of you will take a moment to read it.

At first I thought it was just a part of an overall effort to bring a handful of "elite" institutions to heel in the guise of addressing anti-semitism and DEI. But as I dug further, I learned that:
--it's not just the usual suspects such as Columbia, Harvard, and other Ivy League universities that are being targeted nor are students being targeted just for anti-semitism. In fact, over 80 U.S. colleges and universities have had international students or recent alumni subjected to visa revocations, detentions, or deportations under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.In our own backyard, foreign students have been asked to leave GMU, UVA, and UMD, just to name a few.   
--increasingly, there is 1) ZERO reason given for these actions or 2) the reason given by ICE is "Other" with no explanation given.
--increasingly, the students are not just Muslims, but also from a range of other countries.

To answer the OP's question about "what is the endgame," I would say these are some of the main motivations/objectives:

1)	[b]Nationalism/populist messaging to the base[/b]—“We’re protecting Americans from foreigners who want to take over our country, take our kids’ spots in universities, take our jobs, etc.”
2)	[b]Ideological control[/b] – threatening to deport foreign students or limit universities’ ability to enroll foreign students is a way to control universities and the educated class in general (the “elites”) and to limit dissent, a key tactic in authoritarianism (see Orban’s efforts to exert government control over public universities in Hungary, https://apnews.com/article/hungary-business-government-and-politics-europe-education-9b76dce30164e77be1c3a2fe47db8bfa)
3)	[b]Voter distraction and political theater[/b]. Whip up the base and their anti-foreigner impulses and hope they don’t notice the tanking economy, the Trump administration’s inability to meet its economic promises (lower grocery prices, lower housing costs, etc) and scandals like Signalgate. 
4)	[b]Furthering the anti-globalization and anti-multiculturalism stance of the government[/b]. Attacking foreign students is a part of a larger project to disconnect the US from the rest of the world. This includes withdrawing the US from multinational organizations, imposing punishing tariffs on every country in the world, promoting anti-globalization rhetoric, and rejecting multiculturalism. Foreign students on US campuses are a tangible and potent symbol of multiculturalism and interconnectedness to the rest of the world.[/quote]

Defund racist Harvard. [/quote]

You are either a troll or a pawn in the scheme to divide the country.[/quote]

No - you just live in a bubble. Plenty have been looking at Harvard and other elite unis with utter disgust and wondering why we are subsidizing this crap. [/quote]

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