US travel ban – No winners in academia

United States president Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, including the three African nations of Libya, Somalia and Sudan, is a blow not only for African students and academics, but for the US itself, according to North African and Middle East academics.

Sadallah Boubaker-Khaled, a professor of mathematics at École Normale Supérieure in Algiers, said the ban was likely to have a long-term impact on the perceptions of Africa towards the United States, creating an “indelible stain” of mistrust on the part of African students, particularly as there was a possibility of further African countries being added to the banned list.

Outgoing African Union Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma captured some of this sentiment when she is reported to have said:

"The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries. What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity."

Such mistrust is exacerbated by the fact that reports have indicated that no terrorist attacks were carried out in the US after the 9/11 attacks by people from countries on the banned list, including the three African states.

Money and skills

Boubaker-Khaled said in addition to sacrificing global trust and goodwill, the United States would miss out on both funds and skills brought by foreign students coming from Africa and the Islamic world to American universities.

According to the US Department of Commerce, students from the Middle East and North Africa constituted nearly 10% of total enrolments of international students at US colleges and universities during the 2014-15 academic year and contributed just under US$3 billion to the economy.

These findings were included in a recent edition of the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange which is published annually by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the US State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Davood Rahni, a professor of chemistry at US-based Pace University, told University World News the ban would affect US competitiveness.

"An integral part of the advanced research and development and technology transfers in American universities and colleges has been borne on the shoulders of international students,” he said.

The pivotal role of students from the seven countries announced by Trump and the so-called Islamic world in moving such enterprises forward is documented and verified, he said.

For example, the Egyptian scientist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, known as the "father of femtochemistry", was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999.

Loss of competitiveness

"Trump’s decision will inextricably undermine US competitiveness," Rahni said. "The harmful effect of the ban will not be on students from the seven blacklisted countries…the US's credibility is undermined worldwide due this isolationism and ultra-protectionism."

Notwithstanding the material impact of the ban on the United States, for African students themselves, the ban definitely means significant lost opportunities.

African students would miss out on the “benefits” of an American education and would be unable to “experience an American way of life", according to Anouar Majid, Moroccan higher education expert and vice-president for global affairs at the University of New England in the United States.

However: “The impact of this executive order will have a very limited impact, if any at all, on American universities because the US already welcomes students from around the world," Majid said.

“With reference to African states, the absence of Somali, Sudanese or Libyan students on a campus will not be noticeable,” he added.

Online alternatives

Juma Shabani, former director of development, coordination and monitoring of UNESCO programmes with a special focus on Africa, told University World News that the US measure would mean that students from blacklisted African states might no longer be able to enrol in educational programmes at American universities that required their physical presence in the US.

However, he said African students from countries included in the ban should still explore opportunities to enrol in online programmes offered by American universities.

“This option is viable given the increasing widening of affordable access to ICT and broadband in developing countries,” Shabani added.

"The other alternative for students from these countries is to enrol in higher education institutions in the top three English-speaking host countries, that is the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, or in emerging countries that are increasingly offering quality higher education.”