Category: Trump

  • The Harvard experience: could it happen here?

    The Harvard experience: could it happen here?

    by GR Evans

    On 1 May 2025 The Guardian headline read: ‘Trump administration exploits landmark civil rights act to fight universities’ diversity initiatives‘. What prevents a British King or Prime Minister from attempting to impose sanctions on universities?

    US higher education is exposed both to presidential and to state interference. Government powers to intervene in US HE reside in presidential control of federal funding, which may come with conditions. Trump cannot simply shut down the Department of Education by executive order but it seems he can direct that the Department’s grant- and loan-giving functions are taken on by another government department.

    As early as 2023 Donald Trump had said ‘We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on Western civilization itself’. In response to campus protest he removed $400m of Columbia’s federal funding in March 2025 on the grounds that the University had failed to address the alleged ‘persistent harassment of Jewish students’. In April 2025 he gave orders to Ivy League universities, threatening withdrawal of funding if their teaching and research did not comply with Government policy as the President defined it and that their appointments should have regard to those expectations.

    On 8 April the Washington Examiner reported a planned attempt to counter such action by legislation, that is to prevent Trump’s directives taking effect by amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 ‘to prohibit political litmus tests in accreditation of institutions of higher education and for other purposes.  On 10 April the Chronicle of Higher Education foresaw an Executive Order.

    A letter to Harvard dated 11 April signed on behalf of the Department of Education and other federal agencies asserted that the United States had ‘invested in Harvard University’s operations’ because of ‘the value to the country’ of its work, but warned that ‘an investment is not an entitlement.’ This letter, if accepted, was to constitute ‘an agreement in principle’. Governance was to be ‘exclusively’ in the hands of those ‘tenured professors’ and ‘senior leadership’ who were ‘committed to the ‘changes indicated in this letter’. Its ‘hiring and related data’ and its student ‘admissions data’ were to be ‘shared with the federal Government’. International students ‘hostile to American values’ were not to be admitted and those already admitted  were to be reported to federal authorities. Policies on diversity, equity and inclusion were to end and student protest restricted.

    Harvard and other Ivy League Universities were indignant. Harvard in particular rode the headlines for some days, objecting to the Government demand that it immediately agree:

    to implement the Trump administration’s demands to overhaul the University’s governance and leadership, academic programs, admissions system, hiring process, and discipline system—with the promise of more demands to come

    and thus ‘overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech’. There were reports that US academics were seeking to escape to employment in Canada,  the UK or Europe.

    The American Association of Colleges and Universities(AACU), founded in 1915 as the Association of American Colleges, now has a wide-ranging  and international membership. It is a loose counterpart to the British Universities UK which also has a membership including an extensive range of higher education providers. The AACU issued a Call for Constructive Engagement on 22 April, 2025, but litigation was already in hand, with the President and Fellows of Harvard seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on 21 April. Harvard is listed as the plaintiff with a considerable list of defendants identified (paras 15-30). In its submission Harvard argued that:

    American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom

    and that such ‘American institutions of higher learning’ were ‘essential to American prosperity’.

    It stressed a ‘longstanding collaboration between universities such as Harvard and the federal government dating back to the Second World War’. It pointed to Harvard’s success in using federal funding to achieving significant research outcomes. The recent ‘broad attack of Government’ on ‘universities across America’, not only on Harvard and the other Ivy League Universities listed, had affected the ‘critical funding partnerships’ that made this invaluable research possible.

    This case was being brought because, it was argued, the Government had been using ‘the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard’. Harvard cited the Government’s letter of 11 April as demanding governance reform and a ‘third-party’ audit ‘of the viewpoints of Harvard’s student body, faculty, and staff’, followed by the hiring of new Faculty and admission of students whose views were satisfactory to the Government. It had asserted that teaching should be ‘to the Government’s satisfaction as determined in the Government’s sole discretion’ and to that end Harvard  should ‘terminate or reform its academic “programs” to the Government’s liking’. The Government had since ‘launched multiple investigations and other actions against Harvard’.  

    The Government had ‘within hours of the Freeze Order ‘ended ‘$2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60M in multiyear contract value to Harvard University’ and Harvard began receiving ‘stop work orders’. In order to bring a case against the Government it was essential for Harvard to establish that the Government’s action constituted a breach of public law. To that end it stated that the ‘Court has jurisdiction over Harvard’s claims’ because the University did not ‘seek money damages or an order mandating specific performance of any contract’, but:

    an order declaring unlawful and setting aside sweeping agency action taken in violation of Harvard’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment and its rights guaranteed by statute and regulation.

    Harvard stressed that even though it is a private university its research is federally funded ‘through a grant process administered by federal agencies’. It cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which requires ‘a detailed and mandatory statutory framework’ of procedures to be followed. Harvard had its own procedures, added to or created in August, September and November 2024. Specifically in March 2025, Harvard released updated “Frequently Asked Questions” clarifying that both Jewish and Israeli identities are covered by the University’s Non-Discrimination Policy.

    Harvard explained that it had attempted ‘collaboration’ in the weeks following the government letter and the Federal Task Force’s press release announcing campus visits. It had sought to arrange a meeting on the campus and that was scheduled for late April 2025, yet on April 20 it was reported that the ‘Trump administration has grown so furious with Harvard University’ that ‘it is planning to pull an additional $1 billion of the school’s funding for health research.’

    Trump’s threatened sanctions concerned the future of Harvard’s funding. Harvard has endowments  of c$53 billion so any threat from Trump to reduce federal funding posed a limited risk to its future. However he made a further proposal on 18 April to remove Harvard’s exemption from Government tax on its income, which could have hit its normal operation harder.

    The US counterpart to HMRC is its Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS may grant tax-exempt status to a charitable, religious, scientific or literary organization, on condition that it refrains from campaigning or seeking to modify legislation. However, the President is not permitted to direct the IRS to conduct an investigation or audit. To that extent the counterbalancing of executive, legislative and judicial powers in the US seems to be holding.

    Harvard was making its challenge at a time when the balance between the executive and the judiciary in the US had come into question in a number of cases where Trump’s executive orders sought to override the courts. It claimed that ‘the Freeze Order is part of a broader effort by the Government to punish Harvard for protecting its constitutional rights. … multiple news outlets have reported that the Internal Revenue Service is considering revoking its recognition of Harvard’s tax exempt status’. Representing 86 universities, the Presidents’ Alliance has filed an Amicus brief supporting the litigation.

    Harvard sought in its litigation to have the Freeze Order declared unconstitutional and also the ‘unconstitutional conditions’ sought to be imposed  in the April 3 and April 11 and any action taken under it so far, also banning any future orders in the same vein. It pleaded six Counts, first a violation of the First Amendment in that the letters had targeted the ‘academic content that Harvard professors “teach students”’. Count 2 was that ‘even if the prerequisites of review under the Administrative Procedure Act were not satisfied, federal courts have the “equitable power” to “enjoin unconstitutional actions by state and federal officers.”’ Count 3 was that Title VI does not permit wholesale freezing of a recipient’s federal financial assistance. Instead, it requires that a “refusal to grant or to continue assistance” be “limited in its effect to the particular program, or part thereof, in which . . . noncompliance has been so found.” Count 4 was the Government’s failure to ‘comply with their own regulations before freezing Harvard’s federal financial assistance’. Count 5 alleged that the action had been arbitrary and capricious and Count 6 that it had been ultra vires.

    At Indiana University a professor of Germanic studies was recently investigated under a state law after a student accused him of speech in support of Palestine.

    Could this happen in the UK?

    English higher education providers have their autonomy protected by the Higher Education and Research Act (2017)s.2 [HERA]. This legislation created the Office for Students, a non-departmental public body, whose nearest US counterpart is the Higher Learning Commission, an independent agency founded in 1895 which accredits higher education institutions. The University of Michigan, for example seeks, renewal of its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission every ten years.

    The Office for Students is both regulator and funder, and distributes Government funding to higher education providers. This may take into account ‘particular policy areas and government priorities. Yet HERA outlaws any attempt by the OfS to impose the restrictions Trump sought to impose on the universities of the USA.  English higher education providers must be free:

    (i) to determine the content of particular courses and the manner in which they are taught, supervised and assessed,

    (ii) to determine the criteria for the selection, appointment and dismissal of academic staff and apply those criteria in particular cases, and

    (iii) to determine the criteria for the admission of students and apply those criteria in particular cases.

    Academic staff in England also enjoy ‘freedom within the law’:

    (i) to question and test received wisdom, and

    (ii) to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions,

    without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at the providers.

    There is some Government oversight. In protecting ‘the institutional autonomy of English higher e providers’, the Office for Students is subject to the ‘guidance’ of the Secretary of State, though Government requirements are held off by the legislative fencing.  The guidance of a higher education provider by the Office for Students:

    must not relate to—

    (a) particular parts of courses of study,

    (b) the content of such courses,

    (c) the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed,

    (d) the criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied, or

    (e) the criteria for the admission of students, or how they are applied.

    The legislation adds that:

    guidance framed by reference to a particular course of study must not guide the OfS to perform a function in a way which prohibits or requires the provision of a particular course of study.

    This seems to place universities safely out of reach of the kind of restrictions Trump sought to impose on Harvard and other Ivy League Universities, but the Office for Students is potentially able not only to set its Government funding levels but also affect its students’ access to loans from the Student Loans Company. That can certainly be at risk, for example in the case of the Oxford Business College, whose funding (via franchise arrangements) was blocked in April 2025 when it was found to have abused the student loan system by admitting unqualified students. (US accreditors do hold a lot of power, because universities must be accredited by a federally recognized agency in order to access federal student aid.)

    Access to Government funding through the OfS requires listing by the Office for Students on its Register as an approved provider. The Office for Students did not impose its Conditions of Registration on pre-existing universities before including them in 2018 on its first Register under HERA. It simply treated them as proven acceptable providers of higher education. Each university duly publishes an account of its compliance (eg at Oxford) with the requirements which enable it to remain on the Office for Students Register. What might happen if they were found not to have done so? Short of removal from its Register the OfS has been known to impose fines, notably of more than £500,000 in the recent case of the University of Sussex when it was alleged to have failed to follow its own procedures designed to protect academic freedom.

    Government oversight of the work of HE providers may overlap with or sit uneasily beside forms of ‘accreditation’ and ’qualification’. The accreditation of qualifications in the UK may be the responsibility of a number of ‘agencies’ external to HE providers, some of which are bodies offering professional qualifications. For example the Solicitors Regulation Authority keeps its own register of qualified solicitors. A university degree may not constitute a ‘qualification’ without the completion of further recognised study, some of which may be provided by the university itself, for example the Postgraduate Certificate in Education.

    An area of ‘accreditation’ undergoing significant reform and expansion in the UK covers ‘skills’, including  apprenticeships. Not all universities offer their own apprenticeships, though they may recognise some of those available from other providers at Levels 4 and 5. Nevertheless ‘skills’ are potentially at risk of Government intervention. At the beginning of March 2025, the House of Lords was debating whether  ‘skills’ might benefit from the establishment of a ‘new executive agency’.

    It was recognised that there would need to be a report from the Secretary of State  ‘containing draft proposals’ for an agency, ‘to be known as “Skills England”. Ian Sollom MPobjected that that that would represent ‘a significant centralising of power in the hands of the Secretary of State, without providing proper mechanisms for parliamentary oversight or accountability.’ A ‘statutory, departmental body would have more clout’, he argued.

    An Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) already existed, but it was concerned with qualifications up to Level 5, short of degree-level 6. ‘Skills England’ was intended to begin work in April 2025. ‘When Skills England calls, will anybody answer the phone?’ asked HEPI, pointing to ‘limited autonomy, complex cross-departmental coordination, tensions between national and local priorities, and competing objectives between foundational and higher-level skills need’. Its ‘cross-departmental working’ with Government was unclear.

    It looks as though some universities, at least, are safe from any initiative to interfere from above with the right to self-government and to determine what to teach and research. Harvard records a ‘revenue base’ of $65billion, with ‘federal funding ‘ as its largest source of support for research. The research income of Oxford, for example, is £778m, with commercial research income of £148m. That cannot compare with Harvard, but at least Oxford and some others will remain free to choose how to use that income for its academic purposes.

    This is a modified version of an article first published by the Oxford Magazine No 477 in May 2025, republished with the permission of the editor and author.

    SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    In the latest move in the government’s dramatic feud with the US’s oldest university – and a major victory for international education sector – district judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order yesterday, halting the directive stripping Harvard of its eligibility to enrol students from overseas.

    It follows the institution’s swift decision to mount a legal challenge against the administration’s demands that it hand over all disciplinary records for international students from the last five years if it wanted to regain its SEVP status.

    In its lawsuit, Harvard said: “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission.” The next hearing in the case will be held in Boston on May 29.

    If it comes to pass, the ban on international student enrolments would significantly harm Harvard’s financial situation – with last year’s 6,793 overseas students making up a sizeable 27% of the student body.

    With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission
    Harvard University

    Orders from the Trump administration would not only prevent Harvard from enrolling any F-1 or J-1 students for the 2025/26 academic year, but also force current international students to transfer to another university if they want to stay in the country. 

    The move cause widespread panic among international students – especially given that some are set to graduate in just one week.

    Students told The PIE News that they were worried about what was happening, but trusted Harvard to “have our backs”.

    The institution’s row with Harvard stems from the stand it took – one of the only US institutions to do so – against the administrations raft of demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to do so, the government froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded international students’ records if it didn’t want to lose its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration.

    In US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s letter to Harvard, she said: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements”.  

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  • Decoder Replay: Australia waltzes with two superpowers

    Decoder Replay: Australia waltzes with two superpowers

    The index ranks 26 countries and territories in terms of their capacity to shape their external environment. It evaluates international power through 133 indicators across themes including military capability and defense networks, economic capability, diplomatic and cultural influence, as well as resilience and future resources.

    The portrait that emerges from its latest survey is that while China’s overall power still lags the United States, it is not far behind, even though the current economic slowdown is holding it back in the short term.

    After the two superpowers, trailing a long way back as the next most powerful countries in the Asia-Pacific are Japan, India, Russia and then Australia.

    Economic versus military power

    The index confirms that China draws its power from its central place in Asia’s economic system, while that of the United States comes from its military capability and unrivaled regional defense networks.

    Australia’s relationship with the two mirrors the dilemma facing the whole region.

    The United States is far and away Australia’s main strategic partner and has been since the Second World War.

    In a deal signed in March 2023, Australia is set to acquire a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability with help from the United States through the AUKUS Treaty, which also involves the United Kingdom.

    This was followed by plans to station more U.S. forces in Australia, especially in air bases in northern and western Australia. There are also moves to increase cooperation between both countries in space, speed up efforts for Australia to develop its own guided missile production capability and work with the United States to deepen security relationships with other countries in the region — most notably Japan.

    This comes as Australia has been working hard to get trade restrictions eased with China after it imposed tariffs on a range of Australian products in 2020 during a standoff with the previous government.

    Dining with Joe and Jinping

    China is still Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for almost one third of its trade with the world. Two-way trade with China grew 6.3% in 2020-21 to A$267 billion (about US$180 billion), mostly due to the coal and iron ore sectors.

    So as it stands, Australia’s security relies on the United States but its economic prosperity is heavily influenced by China.

    It’s no surprise then that Prime Minister Albanese had to walk a fine line in 2023 — going from a state dinner at the White House with U.S. President Biden on 26 October to meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping 11 days later.

    Colin Heseltine, a former Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Beijing and now senior advisor for independent think tank Asialink, said Australia is in a conundrum over China.

    “Australia’s major trading partner is also perceived as our No.1 security threat,” he said.

    Normalizing relations before an abnormal U.S. election

    Heseltine believes there is a mood of cautious optimism about the growing relationship between Australia and China since the election of the Albanese government, but expects the future will not be completely free of headwinds.

    In the end, Australia, like many other nations in the region, is pragmatically making the situation work. It has seen relations with Beijing normalize, or as some prefer to describe it, stabilize.

    As for the United States, relations between Canberra and Washington remain vibrant and strong.

    The next big issue for Australia in managing this twin policy of improving ties with the Asia-Pacific’s two diverse superpowers could well be the 2024 U.S. presidential election — who wins it and if China features in it.

    And those things are outside its control.

    Three questions to consider:

    1. What is the emerging dilemma facing most democratic nations in the Asia-Pacific region?
    2. Is China likely to overtake the United States as the Asia-Pacific’s major superpower anytime soon?
    3. What is the biggest threat to the current status quo facing nations in the region?

     

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  • What happens when tyrants fall from power?

    What happens when tyrants fall from power?

    “The despot is dead. Long live … er, who?“

    Unlike kings or queens, dictators and autocrats find it helpful not to have a clear successor or rival who might soften their hold on power.

    Much as that iron-fisted ruler may be loathed, their abrupt departure from the throne can bring significant risk of subsequent turmoil. They have created a system that puts them alone at the centre of power.

    The White House in March was very quick to deny that President Joe Biden was pressing for regime change when he said that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, should not remain in power.

    There is no shortage of countries in recent decades where fallen autocrats have left a power vacuum all too quickly filled by chancers, thugs and weird ideologues, or simply some drab toady of the old regime.

    Covering tyranny

    As a reporter, it was impossible for me not to get caught up in the excitement after popular unrest had driven out yet another long-serving despot in power so long that they had forgotten who was serving whom. It really is exhilarating.

    During a long career as a journalist, I reported in a number of countries where autocratic, often staggeringly corrupt, leaders were forced unwillingly out of office. Sometimes, I’ve been there at the moment, more often to report on the aftermath.

    The first time was just over 30 years ago in Bangladesh, whose military dictator Hussain Ershad had lost power in the face of mass protests. And in a rarity for the impoverished country, whose relatively short period of independence had been marked by violence and assassinations, the leader’s downfall had been almost bloodless.

    By the time I arrived in Dhaka, crowds were cheerfully marching through the capital’s streets. The two people who would dominate Bangladeshi politics until today — the widow of one assassinated leader and the daughter of another — were happily giving interviews to visiting journalists, promising a new era for their country.

    Since then, Bangladesh’s economy has indeed grown. But the country’s politics remain plagued by autocratic leadership, corruption and a drawn-out feud between those two women.

    The lingering influence of despotism

    In the Philippines, a reporter colleague liked to tell stories about joining a crowd streaming through the Malacanang presidential palace, vacant after President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the country in the face of a People’s Power revolt in 1986 following more than 20 years of rule marked by excess and rampant graft.

    This month, their son was elected president with little to offer by way of a platform beyond the promise of a return to those “halcyon days” when his parents were in charge some four decades earlier.

    In neighbouring Indonesia, the family of President Suharto, who led another Southeast Asian kleptocracy into near financial ruin until he was forced to step down in 1998 after more than 32 years of iron rule, continues to try to get back into politics. Suharto’s downfall came with mass protests, violence and fears the giant archipelago would split apart. The country has largely recovered, but some of the elites established during the Suharto years remain a powerful influence.

    Later, I was involved in reporting on the “colour” revolutions of former Soviet states, including Georgia and Ukraine. In both cases, infectious enthusiasm for change and the end of the old regimes did not take all that long to sour.

    The leader of the 2003 Georgian revolution, Mikheil Saakashvili, eventually fled into exile. He is now back in his country where he was jailed on charges of abuse of power.

    Sidelining of opposition

    Ukraine struggled to find a competent leader after casting aside the old guard from the Soviet era with its Orange Revolution, which began the following year.

    Paradoxically, and very unexpectedly, it has taken this year’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to reveal a leader of commanding stature in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian.

    In many of these countries and others ruled by long-serving autocracies, the incentive is for leaders to crush any emerging threat to their hold on power. Rising political stars are sidelined, opponents are exiled, jailed or killed and domestic news coverage is limited to the official line.

    And Russia? Rumours abound that Putin, ever tightening his control during more than 20 years in power, is seriously ill or even faces a coup. As with the likes of Suharto or Marcos, Putin took office when his country was lurching through economic crisis. He was a bit dull. Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Putin didn’t make a habit of rolling up drunk.

    He was smart, focused on the economy, not in thrall to Russia’s plundering oligarchs and able to bring stability to the lives of ordinary Russians exhausted and disoriented by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He became hugely popular.

    But there was a sense that his inner circle didn’t quite trust that popularity. By most accounts, Putin would easily have won a second term in the 2004 presidential election. But the Kremlin could not resist making sure the deck was stacked in his favour. He won 71.9% of the vote.

    What would Russia be like post-Putin

    Putin has run the country ever since, either as president or prime minister. Such is the state’s grip on Russian media that it is not really possible to be sure how popular Putin may be now. One recent poll suggested his star, which had started to look a bit faded, has brightened considerably since the invasion of Ukraine.

    His government is clearly in no mood to put that popularity up for too much public scrutiny, throttling the remaining independent Russian media and introducing a law to hand long prison terms to those who openly oppose the war on Ukraine.

    Prominent Russians who might credibly challenge Putin’s grip on the country live abroad, are in prison or dead. His most recent serious opponent, Alexei Navalny, is looking at years in a Russian prison. It isn’t all that clear, either, whether the bulk of Russians would prefer Navalny as their next leader.

    If Putin is no longer in office for whatever reason, who would be in the running to replace him?

    It seems very unlikely that the current political elite would readily allow a reformer to sweep them from power. Quite possibly, the average Russian — sympathetic to the view that the West has for years been treating their country with contempt — would prefer stability, a job and some international prestige.

    When Russia faced revolution more than a century ago, an estimated 10 million people died after the autocrat Tsar Nicholas II was removed from power.

    Perhaps that’s why Biden officials were so quick to rule out regime change. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

    Questions to consider:

    • If you were working for local media in Moscow, how would you write about the war in Ukraine?

    • Do you think your country’s mainstream media can be relied on to be factual in reporting? Why?

    • If the current leader of your nation loses power, how peaceful do you think the aftermath will be?

    Correction: The editor’s note at the top of the story was changed to correct the date the article was originally published.

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  • Presidents’ Alliance challenges “unlawful” SEVIS terminations

    Presidents’ Alliance challenges “unlawful” SEVIS terminations

    Their suit argues that the thousands of terminations, which to date have left more than 1,800 students without valid status, are “unlawful” and came “without warning, individualised explanation and an opportunity to respond”.

    The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates for immigrant and international student rights, and several impacted students from institutions such as MIT and Boston University filed the suit in the District Court for the district of Massachusetts yesterday.

    Not only have students been forced out of housing, jobs or their chosen institution mere weeks away from graduation, but the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students has “undermined’ institutions’ being able to “attract, retain, and effectively serve” students from overseas, the group warned.

    The court is asked to find that the policy is unlawful and unconstitutional, reactivate the SEVIS records of affected students, halt the policy while the case is being fought and “vacate all improper SEVIS terminations”.

    President and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance, Miriam Feldblum, warned that students would be put off from studying in the US because of the “fear and uncertainty diminishing our global competitiveness and reputation”.

    “The unlawful termination of student records without due process strikes at the heart of higher education’s mission. Colleges and universities drive innovation, research, and workforce growth by fostering global talent – but they can’t do that when students’ futures are derailed without explanation,” she said.

    “These actions deter future students from studying here in the US, and hinder campus administrators from carrying out their work by the arbitrary upending of established regulations and processes.” 

    Meanwhile, Sirine Shebaya, executive Director at the National Immigration Project – which is representing the Presidents’ Alliance – blasted the policy vas “not only lawless… [but] cruel” – marking “yet another manifestation of policies that fly in the face of both legal standards and common decency”.

    These actions deter future students from studying here in the US, and hinder campus administrators from carrying out their work by the arbitrary upending of established regulations and processes
    Miriam Feldblum, Presidents’ Alliance

    While the surge in visa revocations was at first thought to mainly affect students who had expressed pro-Palestinian sympathies, international education stakeholders have been left baffled at a growing number being issued at institutions where no such protests had taken place.

    Some students – including one unnamed Boston University graduate represented in the legal case – are reporting that their visas had been taken away due to minor traffic infractions. Others have been left confused after their visas were revoked despite having no criminal history.

    Yet the State Department continues to back the policy.

    “The Trump administration is focused on protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” a State Department spokesperson told The PIE News this week.  

    “The Department of State will continue to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce zero tolerance for aliens in the United States who violate US laws, threaten public safety, or in other situations where warranted.” 

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  • China-U.S. animosity goes way back

    China-U.S. animosity goes way back

    The United States and China are increasingly at each other’s throats because of deep-seated distrust, a growing range of disputes and festering wounds from the 19th Century. The current deterioration in bilateral relations risks jeopardizing the global economy and could presage a new chapter in post-1945 great-power competition.

    Their mutual antagonism has not been deeper since U.S. President Richard Nixon embarked on a landmark trip to “Red China” in 1972 to pave the way to normalized relations.

    Ahead of the U.S. presidential election on November 3, disputes have flared over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Taiwan, the South China Sea, digital security, trade, journalist expulsions and human rights in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet.

    Some experts describe the rancor as verging on a “new Cold War”, with the potential to disrupt bilateral cooperation in the fight against COVID-19, climate change, terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons.

    U.S. President Nixon in China

    Nixon traveled to China during the Cold War struggle between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The start of formal ties between China and the United States was a game-changer: the two had been on opposite sides during the Vietnam War, but each was at odds with Moscow.

    The trip set the stage for an effort to shape China’s strategic choices after the upheaval spurred by Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao had sought to instill the spirit of China’s revolution in the younger generation during his tumultuous last decade in power (1966-76).

    Mindful that the two countries’ systems were radically at odds, Nixon said in his 1972 icebreaking toast in Beijing: “If we can find common ground to work together, the chance of world peace is immeasurably increased.”

    Nearly 50 years later, the relationship lies largely in tatters. Tensions have risen in recent days over self-ruled, U.S.-armed Taiwan, which China deems a breakaway province that must return to the fold. Taiwan scrambled fighter jets last week after Chinese aircraft buzzed the island in response to a visit by the highest-level U.S. State Department official in four decades.

    “Washington and Beijing have entered into a fundamentally new phase of their relationship, and that strategic distrust between them is likely to intensify regardless of who wins this November’s presidential election,” Kurt Campbell, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Ali Wyne of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, wrote recently.

    Trump and Xi

    Analysts attribute the mounting friction to a more confrontational U.S. administration under U.S. President Donald Trump and a more assertive China under President Xi Jinping.

    Xi became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and added the state presidency in March 2013. Later in 2013, China began building military outposts in the contested South China Sea, and Xi launched the Belt and Road Initiative, a vast plan to build infrastructure links — and increase China’s influence — across the globe.

    The China-U.S. rift could put pressure on some nations to choose sides, as during the 1947-91 Cold War, or to tweak the hedging strategies that some have adopted to remain neutral.

    The path to warmer China-U.S. ties is very narrow, “as the required compromises go against the instincts of both countries’ current leaders,” Carnegie Asia research program’s Yukon Huang, a former World Bank country director for China, wrote this month in an analysis.

    Both Xi and Trump came to power with strong populist agendas, each vowing to return their countries to some vision of past greatness. Seeking reelection, Trump has accused his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, of being soft on China.

    “If Joe Biden becomes president, China will own the United States,” Trump said last month.

    COVID provocations

    Referring to COVID-19 by turns as “the China virus,” “Wuhan virus” and “Kung Flu,” Trump has faulted China for “secrecy, deceptions, and cover-up” in its handling of the disease that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

    “We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world, China,” Trump said in taped remarks delivered to the United Nations General Assembly this week. More than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, more than in any other country.

    Xi, in his address to the General Assembly, called for enhanced cooperation over the pandemic and said China had no intention of fighting “either a Cold War or a hot war with any country.”

    At home, Xi cannot afford to appear weak in the face of foreign demands, and he is bound to his signature “Great Chinese dream,” a drive for greater prosperity for the 1.3 billion Chinese, a larger role on the world stage and international respect consistent with China’s military, financial and economic influence.

    Beijing is angry over what it calls foreign provocations, including protests in Hong Kong it claims were stirred by outsiders, growing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, visits by senior U.S. officials to Taipei and U.S. moves against Chinese companies including telecom giant Huawei and social media apps TikTok and WeChat.

    Hostility in diplomacy

    U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stepped up criticism of the ruling Communist Party of China, which he says is seeking global hegemony.

    “We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come,” he said in a July 23 speech at Nixon’s boyhood home and library at Yorba Linda, California.

    “That if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue it and we must not return to it,” he said.

    Alluding to the 90 million-plus member Chinese Communist party, Pompeo added: “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people – a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.”

    In Beijing’s eyes, the Trump administration has been meddling in Chinese internal affairs, threatening its core interests and leading efforts to contain China, which still smarts from what it calls “a century of humiliation,” largely at Western hands.

    “Century of National Humiliation”

    The “long century” of 110 years was marked by carve-ups of Chinese territory by Britain, the United States and other Western powers, as well as by Russia and Japan, from 1839 to 1949, when Mao’s Communist Party seized power after a five-year civil war.

    A trade war that roiled the world in 1839 pitted Britain against China’s Qing Dynasty. Britain had been buying silks, porcelain and tea from China. But Chinese consumers had scant interest in British-made goods, and Britain started running a significant trade deficit with China.

    To address the trade imbalance, British firms began illegally smuggling in Indian-grown opium, fueling drug addiction in China. The balance of trade soon turned in Britain’s favor, but a Chinese crackdown led to the first Opium War between Britain and China from 1839 to 1842.

    After defeating the Chinese in a series of naval conflicts, the British put a series of demands to the weaker Qing Government in what became the Anglo-Chinese Treaty of Nanjing. Not to be outdone, U.S. negotiators sought to conclude a similar treaty with the Chinese to guarantee the United States many of the favorable terms awarded the British, according to “Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations,” a U.S. State Department publication.

    Long underpinning the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power have been inequitable treaties, lingering resentment over the earlier era’s losses and extraterritorial laws imposed on China.

    “China learnt its lessons from this period of time,” Lu Jingxian, deputy editor of the state-controlled Global Times tabloid, wrote in a column last year. “Lagging leaves you vulnerable to bullying.”

    “Chinese people have walked out of the pathos of century of humiliation, though the West seemingly wants its century of bullying to continue,” he said.

    Meteoric rise

    China stunned the world with the depth and breadth of its economic growth after embracing market-based reforms in 1978, just before formal relations with the United States began in January 1979.

    It is now projected to supplant the United States as the world’s biggest economy by 2030 or 2040. Scholars consider the bilateral relationship to be the 21st Century’s most consequential for the international order.

    China’s meteoric rise began under Deng Xiaoping, who gradually rose to power after Mao’s death and earned the reputation as the architect of modern China. His market-oriented policies transformed one of the world’s oldest civilizations from crushing poverty to a modern powerhouse in military matters, finance, technology and manufacturing.

    China has become the world’s largest manufacturer, merchandise trader, holder of foreign exchange reserves, energy consumer and emitter of greenhouse gases.

    It became the world’s largest economy on a purchasing power parity basis in 2014, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

    With economic growth averaging almost 10% a year since 1978, China has doubled its Gross Domestic Product every eight years and lifted an estimated 850 million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank.

    China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities, which help fund U.S. federal debt and keep U.S. interest rates low — reflecting the interdependence of the two economies.

    South China Sea

    Since Trump was elected in 2016, tensions have risen in the disputed, resource-rich South China Sea (SCS).

    They spiked in mid-July when the U.S. State Department for the first time formally opposed China’s claim to almost all of these waters, calling it “completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.”

    The United States will keep up the pace of its freedom of navigation operations in the SCS, which hit an all-time high last year, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at the time.

    Four Southeast Asian states — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam — have maritime claims that conflict with China’s, as does Taiwan. An estimated $3.37 trillion worth of global trade passes through the SCS annually, which accounts for as much as a third of global maritime trade.

    Over the next 18 months, “a let-up in tensions is unlikely,” Ian Storey, co-editor of Contemporary Southeast Asia at Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, wrote in a recent survey of the dispute.

    “China and the United States will increase their military activities in the South China Sea, raising the risk of a confrontation,” regardless of who wins the U.S. presidential election, he said.

    Beijing’s actions in the region have strengthened a conviction on the part of some U.S. strategists that Beijing is seeking control of an area of strategic, political and economic importance to the United States and its allies.

    Taiwan

    The future of Taiwan, an island democracy of 23.6 million people, is a core concern for Beijing.

    Taiwan has been ruled separately since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled there after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing views Taiwan as sovereign territory that must eventually be unified with the mainland.

    Last month, Alex Azar, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, met President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in the highest-level visit by a U.S. official since Washington cut formal ties to the island in 1979. As a condition for establishing bilateral relations with Beijing at the time, the United States committed to maintaining only unofficial relations with Taiwan.

    In a further poke at Beijing, a senior State Department official traveled to the island this month in another high-profile visit. The decision to send Keith Krach, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, amounted to a rebuke of China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan.

    Chinese military drills off Taiwan’s southwest coast this month were a “necessary action” to protect China’s sovereignty, Beijing said on September 16, after Taiwan complained about large-scale Chinese air and naval drills.

    Hong Kong, Xinjiang

    Another rub has involved Hong Kong, a former British colony and a world financial center that was guaranteed a measure of autonomy by China as part of negotiations for its 1997 return from Britain.

    In May, Trump said he was taking steps to end Hong Kong’s preferential trading status with the United States after China enacted a harsh new security law. The law in effect rolls back the semiautonomous status that had been promised to Hong Kong by Beijing under the mantle of “one country, two systems.”

    In June, Beijing threatened retaliation after Trump signed legislation calling for sanctions against those responsible for repression of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. The U.S. State Department has accused Chinese officials of subjecting Muslims to torture, abuse and “trying to basically erase their culture and their religion.”

    Trump did not hold a ceremony to mark his signing of the legislation, which came as newspapers published excerpts from a new book by Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. Among other allegations, Bolton said Trump sought Xi’s help to win reelection during a closed-door 2019 meeting and that Trump said Xi should go ahead with building camps in Xinjiang.

    Trump and Xi have refrained so far from ad hominem personal attacks on each other, leaving a door ajar for possible one-on-one efforts to halt the deterioration in ties.

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. Why have Chinese-U.S. relations spiraled downward?

    2. What are the main concerns of each country?

    3. What are the implications of the situation for the world?

     

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  • Could Trump’s tariffs end up spurring green innovation?

    Could Trump’s tariffs end up spurring green innovation?

    U.S. President Donald Trump has never been a champion of the environment. From gutting climate policies to rolling back crucial environmental protections, the track record of the U.S. president speaks for itself. 

    But his announcement this month of steep tariffs on a sweeping range of foreign-made goods intended to boost U.S. production may also inadvertently fuel a global shift toward green innovation and a more sustainable future.

    During his first term, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, slashed pollution regulations and gave the fossil fuel industry a free pass. One of his most controversial moves was opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling — a pristine, ecologically-sensitive area home to polar bears, caribou and Indigenous communities that depend on the land.

    Now, he’s back — and this time, his weapon of choice is tariffs. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on all imports from China, Mexico and Canada, as well as on steel, aluminium and cars from around the world.

    By targeting key imports like clean energy components and critical minerals, Trump’s latest trade war threatens to derail climate progress, drive up costs for renewable energy and push the United States further into fossil fuel dependence. The damage is real and the consequences could be catastrophic.

    Tariffs could hamper climate change efforts.

    The implementation of broad tariffs is poised to significantly hinder efforts against climate change and weaken environmental legislation. Here’s how:​

    Disruption of clean energy supply chains: The tariffs, particularly those targeting imports from China like steel, aluminium and lithium directly affect the availability and cost of clean technology components. For instance, the United States imports a substantial amount of lithium batteries from China — $1.9 billion worth in December 2024 alone. Increased tariffs on these imports could raise costs for renewable energy projects and electric vehicles, slowing the transition to cleaner energy sources. ​

    The energy sector is already grappling with shortages of essential parts. New tariffs exacerbate this issue, making it more challenging to procure necessary components for renewable energy infrastructure. This could delay projects and increase reliance on fossil fuels, counteracting efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ​

    Strain on environmental initiatives: The stock market’s negative reaction to the tariff announcements, with the Dow Jones dropping nearly 1,700 points and erasing approximately $3.1 trillion in market value, indicates broader economic instability. Such financial turmoil can lead to reduced funding and support for environmental programs, as both public and private sectors may prioritize immediate economic concerns over long-term environmental goals. ​

    As Trump imposes tariffs, his administration is also rolling back environmental protections. His Environmental Protection Agency is now questioning a key 2009 ruling that classifies greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide as harmful to human health. If the courts overturn it, this could weaken U.S. climate laws and make it harder to fight climate change.

    Unintended consequences

    While Trump’s tariffs largely threaten climate progress in the United States, they could have unintended environmental benefits elsewhere.

    Boosting green manufacturing in other countries: If U.S. tariffs make Chinese solar panels, batteries and EV components more expensive, other countries — especially in Europe, India and Latin America — may ramp up their own clean energy production. China itself may increase investment and focus on domestic EV adoption, hydrogen technology or battery recycling. 

    This could lead to a more diversified and resilient global supply chain for renewable technologies, while also strengthening domestic energy resilience by encouraging countries to develop and secure their own clean energy resources, reducing reliance on foreign imports.

    Strengthening regional trade alliances for green tech: With the imposing trade barriers, countries looking to avoid tariffs might strengthen regional partnerships, such as the EU-India green energy collaboration or China’s push to supply African and Latin American markets with solar and wind technology. This could decentralize the clean energy economy, reducing reliance on any single country.

    Reducing export-driven deforestation: If tariffs make U.S. imports of commodities like beef, palm oil and timber more expensive, countries that export these products (e.g., Brazil, Indonesia) may face declining demand. Less demand equals less incentive to clear forests for agriculture.

    On the other hand, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), adopted in June 2023, aims to block imports of commodities linked to deforestation unless they can be verified as deforestation-free. The EU is a huge consumer of these commodities. 

    With two major markets (U.S. and EU) becoming less profitable for deforestation-linked goods, exporters might change their practices to comply with stricter regulations. This could encourage more sustainable supply chains.

    However, this would depend on whether other countries, like China, pick up the slack and implement EUDR-like regulations.

    Backing off petroleum

    If trade wars escalate and tariffs disrupt global markets, long-term investments in fossil fuel projects could become riskier due to economic uncertainty. Tariffs on fossil fuel-related goods — like equipment, machinery or raw materials — can increase production costs for oil and gas companies. 

    As the cost of extraction, refining and transportation rises, companies could face shrinking profit margins, making fossil fuel investments less appealing. This, and shifting focus to clean energy, might push investors toward renewables, which are increasingly seen as more stable and future-proof.

    There’s a catch: These benefits depend on how other countries respond. If the U.S. tariffs cause economic slowdowns, some nations might double down on fossil fuels to stabilize their economies. So while tariffs could have some green silver linings, they’re more of a chaotic wildcard than a deliberate climate strategy.

    While the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration present significant challenges to global climate efforts, they also create opportunities for positive change. The disruptions in the clean energy supply chain, economic instability and rollbacks of environmental protections are certainly concerning. However, the unintended side effects of these actions might just catalyze a shift in global energy dynamics.

    In the long run, this “chaotic wildcard” could make fossil fuel investments riskier and accelerate the global pivot toward renewables. Countries and industries could be forced to innovate and adapt faster than expected. 

    While the path ahead may seem uncertain, there’s a silver lining: resilience, innovation and adaptability are key to overcoming these challenges. As the world adjusts to these new realities, the opportunity to cultivate a cleaner, more sustainable future is within reach — if leaders recognize this moment and take bold action to seize it. 

    So, while the road ahead may be bumpy, there is still reason to hope and act. 

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. How can governments turn the economic disruptions caused by tariffs into opportunities for advancing clean energy and climate goals?

    2. How can a decentralization of green energy technology be a good thing? 

    3. How can government intervention combined with market forces, like the rising cost of fossil fuels, accelerate the transition to renewable energy?

     

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  • Colorado School Attendance Zones Keep Racial, Socioeconomic Segregation Going – The 74

    Colorado School Attendance Zones Keep Racial, Socioeconomic Segregation Going – The 74


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    Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones at least every four years with a “civil rights focus.” State lawmakers should increase funding to transport students to and from school. And attorneys, advocates, and community organizations should embrace the right to sue over school assignments that increase racial segregation.

    Those are among the recommendations in a new report from the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “Examining the Racial Impact of Public School Attendance Zones in Colorado” concludes that the way Colorado draws school attendance boundaries and assigns students to schools mirrors segregated housing patterns and results in low-income families having less access to high-quality schools.

    “This segregation fuels a widespread belief that schools serving predominantly white and affluent students are inherently better than those serving predominantly students of color or low-income families,” an accompanying policy brief said.

    Other reports from local and national think tanks and advocacy organizations have reached similar conclusions. While some local school officials, such as the Denver school board, have talked about possible solutions, the federal Trump administration has framed efforts to increase racial diversity in schools as discrimination that could trigger civil rights investigations.

    The Colorado Advisory Committee is a 10-person group of bipartisan appointed volunteers. Each state has an advisory committee that produces reports on civil rights issues ranging from housing discrimination to voting rights to the use of excessive force by police officers.

    In its latest report, the Colorado committee found that “thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of Colorado students are likely to be assigned to schools in violation” of a federal law that says assigning a student to a school outside their neighborhood is unlawful “if it has segregating effects.”

    The committee’s recommended solutions attempt to balance strong support for neighborhood schools with allowing families to choose the best school for their child. School choice, or the ability for a student to apply to attend any public school, is enshrined in state law.

    The committee advocated for what it called “controlled choice,” which it said could mean that popular schools reserve seats for students who live outside the neighborhood or that schools give priority admission to non-neighborhood students who live the closest.

    To produce its report, the committee held hearings in 2023 to gather input from national experts including university professors, the author of a book on school attendance zones, and representatives from think tanks across the political spectrum.

    The committee also convened a group of 10 local experts including Brenda Dickhoner from the conservative advocacy organization Ready Colorado; Kathy Gebhardt, who was then a member of the Boulder Valley school board and now sits on the State Board of Education; former Aurora Public Schools superintendent Rico Munn; and Nicholas Martinez, a former teacher who heads the education reform organization Transform Education Now.

    The committee’s other recommendations include:

    • The civil rights divisions of the federal education and justice departments should review options for enforcing “the permissible and impermissible use of race in drawing attendance boundaries and setting school assignment policies.”
    • Colorado lawmakers should correct “the systemic racial and ethnic disparities” caused by the state’s school transportation system, which does not require school districts to provide transportation to students who use school choice.
    • State lawmakers should improve Colorado’s school choice system, including by adopting a uniform school enrollment window statewide and providing families with more information about schools’ discipline policies, class sizes, and other factors.
    • Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones and student assignment policies at least every four years and “consider racial and ethnic integration as part of the rezoning process.”

    “Redrawing school boundaries every few years can help prevent segregation from becoming entrenched while still allowing students to maintain a sense of stability in their educational environment,” the committee’s policy brief said.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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  • Dr. Joanne Liu on NYU Canceling Her Talk (Democracy Now!)

    Dr. Joanne Liu on NYU Canceling Her Talk (Democracy Now!)

     

    The former international head of Doctors Without Borders is speaking out after New York University canceled her presentation, saying some of her slides could be viewed as “anti-governmental” and “antisemitic” because they mentioned the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid and deaths of humanitarian workers in Israel’s war on Gaza. Dr. Joanne Liu, a Canadian pediatric emergency medicine physician, was scheduled to speak at NYU, her alma mater, on March 19 and had been invited almost a year ago to discuss the challenges of humanitarian crises. Censoring speech is “killing the essence of what the university is about,” says Liu. “I truly and strongly believe that universities are the temple of knowledge.”

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  • The military footprint of the United States

    The military footprint of the United States

    The United States is keen to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and end its longest war ever, but the number of American soldiers in the South Asian country is dwarfed by many thousands stationed elsewhere across the globe.

    The 200,000 U.S. troops overseas are testimony to Washington’s persistent international commitment despite deep-seated isolationist impulses reflected in President Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign.

    The costly U.S. military footprint is a legacy of its status as Western leader that America inherited, at times reluctantly, after the two world wars in the last century.

    If Washington ever significantly reduced its network of military bases around the world, it would reflect a major turning point in history and possibly a destabilizing shift in the balance of power.

    The United States, Afghanistan and Taliban insurgents hit a roadblock recently as they tried to implement a face-saving pact leading to the partial withdrawal of American troops in the Asian nation after nearly two decades of hostilities.

    U.S. troops stationed around the world

    The anticipated pullout of about 3,400 of the remaining 12,000 U.S. troops was threatened by continuing violence, a squabble over a prisoner swap and the spread of COVID-19.

    But the American troops in Afghanistan are just the tip of an iceberg. Some 200,000 U.S. troops are stationed in overseas bases across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

    Current lists of U.S. troops overseas by the Defense Manpower Data Center include: 38,000 in Japan, 34,000 in Germany, 24,000 in South Korea, 12,000 in Afghanistan, 12,000 in Italy, 8,000 in Britain, 6,000 in Kuwait, 5,000 in Bahrain, 5,000 in Iraq and 3,000 in Spain.

    Smaller deployments are in Qatar, Turkey, Djibouti, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Belgium, Cuba, Romania and El Salvador.

    The overseas deployments are a legacy of global military engagement dating back to the first years of the U.S. republic in the early 19th century.

    A fight against pirates

    U.S. founding fathers were no strangers to warfare. With significant French support, they defeated Britain to win control of the 13 original colonies, but they were soon challenged by pirates.

    “We can trace the roots of overseas conflict back to the skirmishes with the Barbary Pirates in the Jefferson years,” Michael O’Hanlon, a military historian at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview.

    In 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, sent warships to free U.S. merchant seamen held hostage by North African Barbary Coast pirates.

    Between 1812 and 1814, U.S. troops and warships again sent British forces packing, although the White House was burned.

    “But those skirmishes were not really indicative of any major overseas ambition – just yet,” said O’Hanlon.

    The United States becomes a world leader.

    The next military challenge with standing armies was the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. Then, a strongly isolationist American public was dragged into two world wars in the 20th century, first in 1917 when the German navy began targeting neutral ships, and then in 1941 when the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

    After the world wars, U.S. isolationists sought to keep America out of foreign conflicts and shrink the size of its standing army. “That stopped,” said O’Hanlon, “with the descent of the Iron Curtain in Europe, the communist takeover in China, the Soviet testing of a nuclear bomb and of course the North Korean attack on South Korea, all in the late 1940s or 1950s.”

    Soon the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and signed military treaties with Japan, the Philippines, Germany and South Korea, leaving U.S. troops in some cases as a “trip wire” to warn off aggressors that an attack on U.S. or NATO bases would mean war.

    The latest expansion of U.S. military forces overseas is the Pentagon’s Africa Command. It is working with French troops to patrol the Sahara region, where Islamist militants have launched attacks in several former French colonies including Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Tunisia.

    But a proposal to reduce the U.S. military’s involvement in Africa has stoked fears that militants could end up destabilizing or controlling large parts of the sub-Saharan Sahel.

    The spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Col. Sonny Leggett, recently tweeted that despite the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States will pursue its plan to withdraw troops until 8,600 are left.

    Under the deal signed at the end of February, the U.S. is to cut its forces in Afghanistan to 8,600 service members within 135 days of the deal, and the international coalition backing the United States is to draw down by a commensurate amount, the Hill newspaper reported last month.

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. Who were the Barbary pirates?

    2. Why did the United States enter World War One and World War Two?

    3. Why did the United States not revert to form and retreat into an isolationist shell after World War Two?

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