Technology and geopolitics are driving a major shift in global talent chains which previously saw Chinese and Indian students studying abroad. However, coupled with visa uncertainties in the United States and other countries, tensions have led to students staying at home or returning after study or work abroad.

Top Japanese universities are stepping up plans and creating new budgets in order to accept international researchers and students facing uncertainty in the US after the administration of President Donald Trump threatened to drastically cut research funding and suspend visa applications from abroad.

To practise academic hospitality in 2025 means refusing to let government policies and physical borders dictate who belongs at a university. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, technology can be leveraged to create visa-independent pathways for international scholars and students.

The current challenges facing Harvard University in its confrontation with the Trump administration in the United States are not confined to admissions policy – they interrogate the very conditions under which universities can continue to function as autonomous spaces of ethical inquiry and global engagement.

Academics and students in Malawi have bemoaned the loss of funding from the now largely dismantled United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, which has ended scholarships and harmed some higher education projects in agriculture, science, technology, engineering and health.

The imminent closure of the Conflict Observatory-Ukraine, based at Yale University’s Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, which has tracked Russia’s forced removal of thousands of Ukrainians – including almost 20,000 children – is a threat to the very ‘ecosystem’ of humanitarian labs.

The Trump administration’s requirement that Australian researchers who collaborate with United States federal agencies must declare any links to China and comply with the government’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion, America First agenda suggests that diversifying Australia’s research partners is now a national priority.

The apprehension in Dr Abdul Muminu Isah’s voice was palpable as he recounted the impact of the United States foreign aid freeze on his team’s HIV/AIDS research projects. The principal investigator at the Person-Centred HIV Research Team at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Isah coordinates a number of HIV research programmes that are now in jeopardy.

For decades, United States foreign aid has supported universities across Africa. The US aid freeze could, therefore, have a lasting impact on higher education on the continent as it disrupts research, academic exchanges and long-standing university partnerships, also forcing institutions to rethink their funding models and global alliances.