Why Are So Many American Students So Anti-American?
Maybe the reason is that a substantial percentage of them are not American
Americans have no idea how much American universities have been repurposed to cater to foreign students.
I was surprised when I returned to Davis to see a high-rise foreign student housing complex where there had been farmland. “International students” make up nearly 20% of the student body.
The reason for this is obviously that international students pay a higher tuition.
We are importing the elite of other countries. Often, these elite do not share America’s egalitarian values. Many are used to servants. Many are scions of the policy-making elite. Many are wealthy in a culture with wealth differences that beggar the American imagination.
It also may explain why so much of American academic culture is anti-American. Why shouldn’t it be? The wealthiest cohort of students is not American. (fn. 1)
Tablet links the anti-Semitic/anti-American protests at Columbia to the international student population:
There’s also no confusion about the fact that these rallies feature Arab and Muslim students who eagerly support terrorism — often by denying that Hamas or its actions of Oct. 7 constitute “terrorism” at all. Equally evident is that many of the students leading, organizing, and participating in these protests and expressions of antisemitism and support for Hamas on college campuses are not Americans — meaning that they are not American citizens or even green card holders. Rather, they are foreign passport holders, including from Arab and Muslim countries, who have decided to avail themselves of U.S. educational infrastructure while importing the passions and prejudices of their home countries to American campuses.
American universities have made either an exceedingly clever or else exceedingly reprehensible bargain: quota-filling at a profit.
Indeed, the universities have acknowledged the obvious fact that many of the campus protest leaders are foreign students, here on limited educational visas, in the manner with which they have chosen to handle the Gaza protests. Early on, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) cautioned students who occupied lecture halls, prevented other students from going to class, and otherwise violated school policies and guidelines, that they could face suspension for their behavior. But it quickly became clear there would be no serious consequences for noncompliance. When the students pressed on, MIT only suspended a handful of them “from non-academic campus activities.” The explanation MIT President Sally Kornbluth gave for her decision was unambiguous: “serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues.”
Tablet goes on to explain the economics behind the rise in international student “quota filling.”
The average share of international students in Ivy League schools who enrolled in the fall of 2023 is about 15%. The overall international share is higher. A quarter of Harvard’s student body is now international. At MIT, it’s nearly a third.
The scheme by which U.S. taxpayers pay to give 25% or more of the places at America’s most prestigious universities to foreign students is a recent innovation — one that took shape between 2004 and 2014, and has helped make the universities’ DEI rhetoric cost-free. The international share of freshmen at Georgetown nearly quadrupled from 3% in 2004 to 11% a decade later, with similar numbers at Berkeley and Yale. The growth in undergraduate enrollment at Yale during that decade was fueled almost entirely by foreigners. In that same period, the number of incoming foreign students at Ivy League schools rose by 46%.
Behind this increase lies the simple reality that only a comparatively small number of Americans can afford the mind-numbingly high fees that American universities extort from their captive domestic market. Foreign students, the overwhelming majority of whom are either the children of wealthy foreign elites or directly sponsored by their governments, represent a serious source of funding for American colleges, public and private alike. These students often pay full or near-full tuition and board, and help public universities balance the books in the face of budget cuts. More broadly, they augment revenue by helping to fill federally funded programs that are based on racial and ethnic quotas.
Depending on how you look at it, American universities have made either an exceedingly clever or else exceedingly reprehensible bargain: Quota-filling at a profit. While this practice is generally covered with asinine bureaucratic language such as “promoting diversity” and “fostering a cosmopolitan culture” for a “global community,” it is in fact a racket by which universities take slots presumably intended for members of groups that are held to be economically and culturally deprived — and on which the universities would be obligated to take a loss — and instead sell them at a profit to the families of some of the more privileged people on Earth, while also continuing to sell identity-politics platitudes as institutional ideology.
It seems obvious enough that foreign students who can afford the cost of full tuition and board without financial aid often come from the elite segment of their societies, which in authoritarian countries often translates into overlap with the ruling regimes. When it comes to the Middle East especially — though hardly exclusively — this privileged class is both outwardly “Westernized” and soaked in the antisemitism prevalent in their home societies.
My alma mater notes that the percentage of international students is rising:
The Number of International Students at UC Davis is Increasing
Over the last several years the total international population of students on campus has grown at an average rate of 18.9%.
China is the largest contributor to this growth, with an estimated total of 4,443 students.
Communist China now accounts for 11% of the Davis student body.
My initial thought was that it was good to bring the children of totalitarians to America so that they can be exposed to a democratic culture. However, it occurred to me, that cultural exchanges are two-way street. Are we certain that totalitarian ideals aren’t flowing back to our children?
The evidence suggests that it is. Students — particularly leftwing students — favor censorship:
Law students have embraced totalitarian tactics. The most recent case involved pro-Hamas law students attacking the Dean of UC Berkeley by rehearsing anti-Semitic tropes.
Stanford law students recreated a scene from straight out of the Cultural Revolution in China.
Are we certain that our leftists aren’t being influenced by Communist or anti-Semitic international students more than we are influencing international students with our democratic and pluralist ideas?
Taxpayers created the UC system to educate California students, and they have supported the system with their taxes for that reason. We are happy to have immigrants, but with nearly 20% of the student body constituting foreign students—who are presumably taking places away from Californians—something has gone wrong.
Post-script: Jonathan Turley points out polling that indicates how significant the totalitarian backflow may be among students:
FIRE released “The Judge Duncan Shoutdown: What Stanford Students Think” including 54% of Stanford students said that Judge Duncan’s visit should have been canceled by the administration.
Another 36% stated that using physical violence to shutdown a campus speaker is “always,” “sometimes,” or “rarely” acceptable.
75% said the same about shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking.
Not surprising, only six percent of conservative students now feel comfortable disagreeing with professors.
The survey is consistent with other surveys and polling in higher education.
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Fn.1: And, admittedly, many international students recognize America as a great opportunity. My son-in-law was an International Student. You will not find a finer person. He will make a terrific American citizen.
That said, the purpose of California public education should be to serve Californians (and, under the Constitution, other states as well.) That does not mean that it cannot also allow some international students. It is a fair question to wonder whether it is serving that function when it engaged in a competition to attract wealthy international students, resulting in a nearly 20% foreign student body population.
It is past time for a difficult conversation about the purpose of public education.
