Trump hurting global trade in ideas

Schools remain fearful of the lengths the administration may go to bring US universities to heel.

- Sally Tyler

Much attention has been focused on Thailand’s scramble to achieve a bilateral trade agreement with the United States to avoid a 36% tariff on all exported goods. Yet a different restrictive trade policy has received comparatively less scrutiny — the Trump administration’s clampdown on American universities, including a possible ban on the enrolment of international students.

While it is typical to view shipments of rice or semiconductors as exports, it is less common to discuss the free flow of ideas in and around US universities as a function of trade and as a uniquely American export. Immeasurable benefits flow to the US and countries around the world from the participation of international students on American campuses. Now this trade in ideas is jeopardised by threatened Trump administration plans to wall off scholarship and scientific inquiry much in the same way it has tried, and failed, to wall off the southern border of the United States.

President Trump began this attack on higher education soon after his inauguration earlier this year by freezing grants to universities from the National Science Foundation, quickly followed by freezing other research funds. Several university presidents were called to testify in contentious hearings on Capitol Hill in relation to their use of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, one of the most salient targets of the Trump Administration. These policies have increased the enrolment of first-generation college students and students of colour but have also been indirectly associated with political expression that the administration finds objectionable, including support for a free Gaza and opposition to US support for Israel.