Less than three weeks after Donald Trump was named the 47th president of the United States, several top American universities issued travel advisories for their students from foreign countries to return to the US ahead of the new president-elect’s swearing-in on January 20.
Several international media outlets have reviewed and quoted communications sent by leading US universities to their students currently abroad.
“The safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country is to be physically present in the US on January 19th and the days thereafter of the spring semester,” read an email from the Wesleyan University’s Office of International Student Affairs.
“We are not able to speculate on what a travel ban will look like if enacted, nor can we speculate on what particular countries or regions of the world may or may not be affected,” the University of Massachusetts wrote in a post on Instagram advising its international students, scholars, faculty and staff under UMass immigration sponsorship to return to US ahead of Trump’s swearing-in.
“…the Office of Global Affairs is making this advisory out of an abundance of caution to hopefully prevent any possible travel disruption to members of our international community,” the varsity said.
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) advised students not to make decisions based on rumours or speculation about what policies the new administration may pass—but suggested that students should be aware that new immigration or travel policies could be enacted as early as January 20.
The universities’ concerns stem out of widespread anticipation of travel bans and visa restrictions for international students and faculties like that were enacted during Trump’s first term. A week into his presidency in 2017, Trump signed an executive order restricting the entry of citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations into the US for 90 days. Several green card holders (permanent residents in the US) were also prevented from entering the US. Following this was a series of restrictions and travel bans for several foreign nationals, especially from Muslim-dominated countries and others like Venezuela and North Korea.
Visa restrictions and bans were also imposed on Chinese nationals, while China remained the second top-sending country of international students to the US with 2,77,398 students in 2023-2024, according to data from ‘Open Doors 2024 Report on International Educational Exchange’. India leads the list with 3,31,602 students.
Trump, in August 2018, remarked that every Chinese student coming over to study in American universities is a “spy.” He later vowed to crack down on the “many thousands of SPIES working in the academia, media and even government.”
Pro-Palestine movement
The past year has shown American universities in a different light. Several top universities in America, starting with the prestigious Columbia University witnessed widespread protests demanding a divestment from Israel in the wake of its “genocidal” war on Gaza. Students, faculties and staff across the universities participated in the demonstrations including setting up encampments in the campuses, making clear demands and shifting the narrative surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza.
The protesters were met with violent crackdown by the police under Biden administration apart from threats from politicians, intimidation from university administration and being labelled as anti-semitics by the media.
However, Trump has repeatedly said that Biden’s approach to the protesters had been “weak”. He labelled the protesters as “pro-Hamas radicals” and vowed to deport them and make the “college campuses safe and patriotic again.”
“If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” US vice-president elect JD Vance said before the elections.
“The universities have never been a threat to the US administration except for during the Vietnam war and other rare instances. Now the genocide on Palestine has woken up the university spaces once again…But I think the universities are going to be under increasing regulation in the coming years,” said Muhammed Shan, a teaching fellow at Virginia Tech.
Some of these regulations are detailed in ‘Agenda 47’, Trump’s manifesto for the recently concluded elections.
In a video dated November 1, Trump announced a new alternative to American universities which is to be named the ‘American Academy.’ Trump stated that the institute would be established using the “billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.”
He said that the aim of the institute is to provide “truly world-class education available to every American, free of charge,” and “without adding a single dime to the federal debt.”
“It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed—none of that’s going to be allowed,” he stressed.
In an earlier video released in July last year, Trump vowed to reclaim America’s “once great educational institutions from the radical Left” by using the college accreditation system which he dubbed as his “secret weapon.”
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all,” he said.
“These standards will include defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats,” he explained.
The Guardian has in October reported that House majority leader Steve Scalise in a meeting with pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), detailed plans to pull billions of dollars of federal funding and strip off accreditation from some of the top American universities “to punish them for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.”
Trump has also vowed to dismantle the Department of Education and send “all education BACK TO THE STATES.”
“We are going to end education coming out of Washington DC, close it up, all the buildings and people that hate our children in many cases…” he said.
“We want states to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse,” he said claiming that despite spending three times more money on education than any other nation, “and yet we are absolutely at the bottom, we’re one of the worst.”
According to a Forbes report, closing down the Department of Education will cut crucial funding for schools and colleges, cripple special education efforts and hamper civil rights enforcement.
The plan has also been mentioned in the infamous ‘Project 2025,’ a series of policy proposals put together by right wing think tank Heritage Foundation. Though Trump has distanced himself from the initiative, most of the top officials inducted into his administration are hard core conservatives who have worked with the project.
However, Shan from Virginia Tech thinks it wont be a cakewalk for Trump and his allies.
”I don’t think he will be able to pass that bill abolishing Dept of Education as it requires democrats’ votes for congressional approval. It probably remains as a threat. But if he does it, it would affect the American students more than international students and therefore a strong domestic pushback is expected,” Shan said.
According to Shan, a looming threat over foreign students would be another project form the Heritage Foundation, which is more likely to be implemented by Trump.
“I think Trump will implement what’s called Project Esther created by Heritage Foundation. This project is designed to drive people deemed threatening to American values out of the country; including university spaces. Palestinian movements in the US universities may face a potential threat in the form of this project in the coming days,” he said.
Shan however thinks that even though Trump’s approach towards immigrant students in disciplines like humanity, sociology etc.. could be potentially harmful, he might welcome a more “diverse student population to technical educational fields such as computer science, just as Biden did.”
Pointing to the violent crackdown and intimidation of pro-Palestine movements in universities during Biden administration, Shan remarked, “Trump’s return to power may not do worse to the foreign students compared to Biden in general.”