Donald Trump’s war on education, and intelligence in general, is ramping up with a xenophobic edge.
The president — who has said he loves “the poorly educated” — has launched a crusade on American universities in an effort to bring them under his control.
In his second term, Trump’s anti-intellectual campaign has intersected with his anti-immigrant agenda. A prime example of this came last year, when his administration suspended and canceled research grants and sought to revoke some student visas — which has led to a so-called brain drain from scientific fields.
And on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration is considering a $100,000 fee for foreign students looking to work in the U.S. after graduation. According to the Journal:
The Trump administration is considering attaching a $100,000 price tag on international students’ ability to work in the U.S. after they graduate from an American university, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would make it much less attractive for foreigners to study in the U.S.
If enacted, the fee would significantly advance President Trump’s efforts to restrict nearly all forms of legal immigration. It would particularly harm universities, which rely on recruiting international students as a reliable source of revenue, as well as top Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms, which disproportionately hire international college graduates to fill technical roles.
A DHS spokeswoman told the Journal: “No policies should be considered final until formally announced. At DHS we are always having conversations about how to use all tools in our arsenal to protect the integrity of our legal immigration system.”
To be clear, I’ve seen nothing that suggests this proposal would make it easier for Americans to attend college. What seems more likely here is that many international students — who throughout history have played crucial roles in all sorts of academic research and discoveries — will either forgo bringing their talents to the U.S., or come here and then go elsewhere after receiving an American education.
In either scenario, the U.S. would largely miss out on top talent whose expertise could bring critical, if not life-altering, improvements to society — all because of the MAGA movement’s bigoted obsession with demonizing immigrants.
And when you pair this proposal with the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize research grants, which experts have warned could be disastrous for American science, the risk of national stupefaction — that is, a nation being made dumber by its illiberal and incompetent leader — seems clear. And dire.
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