Bomb In War On Colleges: All International Student Programs On Hold Now

This fascism sure is happening fast.

Protestors at Harvard yesterday

Welp, child of Cuban refugees Marco Rubio has cabled all US embassies directing them to stop scheduling international student visa interviews, while the State Department combs through applicants’ social media profiles in search of UNGOODTHINK. So it is possible that there will be few to no international students at US universities in the fall. Maybe a handful of “refugee” white South Africans?

Even if universities sue and prevail — and a judge just blocked the administration from pulling the same move at Harvard within 24 hours last Friday — an atmosphere of students shoved into vans by masked men, the possibility of being detained for months in jails with ankle-deep sewage, hundreds of student visas chaotically revoked then restored, fear of free speaking, threatening letters from the DHS, a Congress that openly wants to stop judges from being able to enforce injunctions, an impotent Supreme Court inclined to prostrate itself and give the regime whatever it wants and tolerate its open defiance is ... a damper.

And stopping the flow of 1.1 million foreign students will massively shrink or shut down hundreds of colleges dependent on their tuition money for financial survival. Colleges used to get so much federal and state funding that your parents could put themselves through school by working summers at a diner, but thanks to decades of Republican policies, schools have become dependent on the $44 billion or so that foreign students bring to fund hundreds of thousands of jobs, as most foreign students pay full price. Harvard’s undergraduate enrollment is 28 percent foreign students, and 14 other schools have a higher percentage than that, including Carnegie Mellon (44 percent), Columbia (40 percent), and Barron Trump’s own NYU (37 percent).

Oh hey there, Columbia! Remember how after the regime took $400 million of their funding and dragged one of their students, Mahmoud Khalil, to ICE jail, their Board of Trustees unconditionally surrendered and immediately began colluding with the administration anyway? Columbia banned all protests, punished students for past protesting, and fingerpointed students suspected of being at protests, even ones who were just there to report for the student newspaper, then tried to hold their diplomas hostage unless they participated in fact-finding meetings. They appointed a special senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments, to direct changes to faculty members’ curricula to make sure it was “balanced.” Columbia rolled over for all that, and where did it get them? They ruined their reputation only to be just as fucked as everybody else, and still didn’t get their $400 million back, and have had to lay off 180 staffers (so far).

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ALSO, the Big Buttfucking Bill that the House just passed would tax college endowments, with levels starting at 1.4 percent, and going to up to 21 percent (same as the current corporate income rate) based on a college’s assets per student, meaning that Harvard would owe the IRS more than $11 billion a year, and Columbia would owe $3 billion.

And the administration is not done with Harvard in particular, either. On top of the $2.65 BILLION in grants already frozen, yesterday it hatched plans to yank still $100 million more. Harvard is dug in and determined to hang in as an independent institution, and with the world’s biggest endowment ($53 billion) it has the best chance of any school to survive. But it will still be a shell.

That is the administration’s goal! And if hundreds of colleges perish, that’s fine with them too. In the immortal words of Scott Pelley, “ignorance works for power.” Especially THIS power, this junk drawer of scammers, creepers, and under-qualified incompetents.

Some People Are Saying Trump has had it out for Harvard because Barron got rejected, but Melania posted from wherever she is (where is she?!) but that it is not true! He did not apply! And indeed Trump has had it out for international students since his first term, and control of prestige schools and education is always an authoritarian goal.

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Trump Administration Drops Stupid War On Foreign College Students, For Now

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As MAGA philosopher, Steve Bannon buddy, and JD Vance/techbroligarch whisperer Curtis Yarvin once opined on a podcast, to take over, “you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past the start of April.” And he pounded on his Substack that “regime change” would require that “all accredited universities be both physically and economically liquidated.”

But, Yarvin, Trump et al. also know the regime will still need the prestige that institutions lend, as Yarvin explained at a debate with Professor Danielle Allen at Harvard earlier this month. Because the new political system will be a corn field, or something.

JFC look at this guy, you can smell mildew and Corn Nuts through the screen! This is the MAGA philosopher? He looks like he should be selling Ecstasy outside of an Imagine Dragons show in Providence. His blog name was “Mencius Moldbug.” Of course he got in their circle via Steve Bannon.

Anyway, philosophized Yarvin, if you do not care to watch:

“there's something brittle and something broken and something questionable and something wrong about authoritarian populism without a backbone of prestige, without a backbone of aristocracy, without institutions, and I would say just as the, you know, the sort of the challenge of these institutions is to renew themselves, the challenge of the enemies of these institutions is to explain where we go from here and how that prestige is regenerated, and whether it's generated, you know, by the kernels of corn, you know, sprouting again into a new beautiful corn field, whether it's represented by new institutions is unclear, but what is clear is that prestigious institutions are necessary and essential, prestige is essential.”

Said the sloppy, hunchy blogger.

But that essential prestige, the value of the brand, comes from what the universities actually do: research, teaching critical thinking, offering a liberal education using a broad-based curriculum, gathering together top minds, and preparing students to be informed citizens of the world.

Learning to rat-a-tat propaganda lies like Charlie Kirk is not a valuable skill for any other job anywhere, outside of the Trump administration or Russian television. And, once lost, a reputation, the “prestige,” the brain trust, is not easily regenerated. Many years of damage has already been done.

Anyway, all of this is awful, but students and schools are fighting back! There was a big protest at Harvard yesterday:

And some international students published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that is a good read, not mincing words about what’s going on here:

We should make no mistake about President Donald Trump’s strategy: He is trying to install himself as provost of our university. He seemingly wants to dictate who can be admitted, what classes can be taught and which professors should be fired. Disagreeing with the current administration, whether an economics professor opposing tariffs or a medical researcher debunking anti-vaccine myths, could lead to punishment. In Trump’s world, there is no such thing as an independent institution.

To this end, he is using us international students as poker chips in this authoritarian game. He is trying to pressure Harvard by putting our futures at risk.

UGH, those poor kids. Won’t somebody actually think of the children, the earnest, smart, hardworking children, and all the nice scientists trying to cure cancer who are being traumatized by all this?

Other countries are. The Japanese government is urging its universities to accept more international students, and Hong Kong’s Education Secretary Christine Choi called on universities there to welcome “outstanding students from all over the world,” and Australia, Europe, and Canada have also stepped up to welcome brain-drained scientists, too. America’s loss will be many other places’ gain. Foreign colleges in English-speaking countries can likely expect a boon of American students, too. For those that can afford that. The rest of us will be trained to plumb the commodes of the rich, and screw in screws at the robot factory for two dolls a month!

[ New York Magazine / CBS / BBC]

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