Isolationism is a loser’s game and devastating for HE

Bernhard Streitwieser is a NAFSA Senior Fellow and has contributed an essay to NAFSA’s International Education in a Time of Global Disruption report. The following is an edited critique of Jenny J Lee’s contribution in the same report on the ‘China threat’. In it, she argues that targeting students due to their ethnicity or national origin is a clear danger that international education professionals and their institutions should resist and confront.

In her well documented essay, Jenny J Lee outlines the current US administration’s allegation of a ‘China threat’ to higher education and suggests how stakeholders might respond. In breaking down the threat’s essential features, Lee debunks the notion that all Chinese students pose a national security concern, instead arguing that this position is built on ‘neoracist’ policy and xenophobic rationales.

Most importantly in my view, Lee argues how this position will jeopardise the benefits gained from international collaboration. I will explore three key points raised by Lee’s essay.

First, are we at an unprecedented moment of nationalism? While the heralded notion of the United States as a melting pot is indeed borne out by demographic studies, US history has undergone other significant periods of tribalism.

These episodes include Protestant resistance to Catholics arriving from Ireland in the 1830s and to Germans 10 years later; anti-immigrant sentiment at the turn of the century and into the 1920s; and fear of foreigners during both world wars, with refugees refused entry and foreign-born individuals accused of being spies.

In the post-war period, immigrants fleeing the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War and drug violence and poverty in Latin America have further driven migration into the United States.

These patterns have always challenged communities where established migrant groups reject newly arrived migrant groups, perpetuating a frustrating but historically embedded reaction to outsiders.

The current US administration is once again exploiting this historically documented pattern. But what may be unprecedented is the extent to which groups at the highest levels of government directly attack others and relish the polarisation this causes.

Within the higher education sector, this exploitation plays out by universities having two equally poor alternatives. Either end collaboration with Chinese scholars and tacitly agree that they are intent on sabotaging academic institutions, or reject that notion and be accused of wilfully colluding with the enemy. Both positions are straw men.

The benefits of migration

Second, is migration a net gain? There is ample evidence to suggest that newly arrived migrants over time contribute significantly to strengthening their host country’s economy.

Data from the OECD show that between 2004 and 2014, up to 47% of the increased workforce in the United States, and 70% in Europe, was due to migration. Tax payments into the economy by migrants outweighed the social benefits they drew from it. Young migrants generally became better educated than homegrown retirees. The contributions migrants made to labour market flexibility boosted the earnings of the overall working population.

Third, is international collaboration mutually beneficial? Studies have shown that international collaborations significantly increase faculty productivity.

International partnerships reap multiple benefits, including developing productive synergy through knowledge and resource sharing; augmenting mutual understanding; increasing capacity for research and training; transferring skills and bringing in diverse perspectives; and producing more journal citations with greater impact.

The insularity penalty

The opposite is true when fear works against collaboration, as is the case with the alleged China threat. Chinese scholars have dramatically increased their output over the past decade, while the current US mood is moving toward protectionism in the name of national security.

More than two decades ago, Philip Altbach argued in his study of the American professoriate: “American scholars and scientists remain remarkably insular in their attitudes and their activities.”

Today, globalisation and its attendant ease of international mobility and enhanced virtual communication has likely reduced insularity among individual academics, but if the US government continues to cut ties with potentially productive partners, like the global powerhouse China has become, it is the United States that will experience the most devastating effects.

Dr Bernhard Streitwieser is assistant professor of international education at George Washington University in the United States and UNESCO co-chair in international education for development. His research focuses on higher education, with a comparative regional concentration on Germany and the United States, where he studies access and integration of underrepresented students with an emphasis on refugees; the internationalisation of higher education and global competition; and student exchange and study abroad.

Opinions expressed by the Senior Fellows are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. NAFSA’s International Education in a Time of Global Disruption report is available free to non-members here.