The Harvard case is not an outlier. It is a signal flare

The news broke like a tremor through the global academic community: the Trump administration had revoked Harvard University’s right to enrol international students.

Overnight, the world’s most iconic university – a symbol of intellectual freedom and transnational excellence – was recast not as a beacon of learning but as a potential national security threat.

Over 6,800 students, many of whom had travelled across oceans to study in the United States, were thrust into legal uncertainty, personal anxiety and institutional limbo. This was not merely a visa decision. It was a declaration. A warning shot. A redefinition of the university’s civic role.

For students, it felt like betrayal. For faculty, it sounded an alarm. For other institutions watching from the sidelines, it raised a sobering question: if Harvard – wealthy, historic and globally revered – could be targeted like this, what protection is there for any university that dares to remain open, plural and global?

But the implications stretch even further. What we are witnessing is not just an immigration policy change or a clash between one university and one administration. We are crossing a threshold where education itself is being redrawn along ideological lines – where the border is no longer just a line between nations but a boundary around thought, speech, protest and affiliation.

What happens when knowledge becomes suspect? When the free movement of students, ideas and inquiry is treated not as a diplomatic asset but as a geopolitical liability? This is not just about Harvard. It is about the future of higher education in a world where nationalism is ascendant, surveillance is normalised and truth is increasingly subject to political permission.

The Harvard case is not an outlier – it is a signal flare. And the question it poses to all of us, regardless of country, discipline or ideology, is this: Can the university still exist as a civic sanctuary of inquiry, or will it be fractured into zones of ideological control and sanctioned knowledge?

McCarthyism: A stark precedent

The 1950s McCarthy era offers a stark precedent. American universities became sites of ideological policing. Faculty members were forced to sign loyalty oaths. Entire disciplines – particularly in the humanities and social sciences – faced defunding or scrutiny. Then, the spectre was communism; now, it is ‘foreign influence’ and ‘un-American values’.

The playbook has evolved from televised hearings to visa revocations and surveillance directives, but the goal remains the same: to control intellectual space by politicising trust.

Beyond the US, the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has systematically revised school and university curricula to emphasise Hindu nationalist narratives. References to Islamic rulers, secularism and caste-based oppression have been downplayed or removed entirely. University appointments and funding increasingly reflect political loyalty rather than academic merit.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has long maintained strict control over higher education. Academic discussions on topics such as Tibet, Taiwan or Tiananmen Square are forbidden.

Collaborations with Western institutions are tightly regulated, and students abroad are often monitored through consular networks or digital means. The university, in this system, serves not as a space of critique but as an extension of state ideology.

In today’s fractured and multipolar world, universities are no longer just places of learning; they are geopolitical actors. Whether by design or default, they shape reputations, produce elites and serve as mediators of ideologies between nations. What gets taught, who gets admitted, and which research gets funded are no longer just academic questions: they are matters of international consequence.

Throughout the 20th century, the United States leveraged its universities as instruments of soft power. Programmes like the Fulbright and Marshall scholarships exported American ideals, welcomed foreign talent and cultivated transnational allegiance.

Universities were the scaffolding of what Joseph Nye called “attractive power” – offering an alternative to authoritarianism, not through coercion, but through aspiration. Open science, academic freedom and cross-border collaboration became part of America’s cultural diplomacy. But that model is now unravelling.

The language of openness and exchange is increasingly being replaced by that of vetting and containment. In place of mutual knowledge production, we are witnessing epistemic suspicion. International students and visiting scholars, once welcomed as bridges between nations, are now scrutinised as vectors of influence, espionage or ideological risk.

The revocation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification is only the most visible example of this shift – a message delivered in the bluntest terms: your presence is conditional, your ideas are suspect and your access can be revoked.

Geopolitical alignment

This is not happening in isolation. In China, universities are actively aligned with the state’s geopolitical ambitions. In Russia, academic institutions have been absorbed into the apparatus of ideological control.

In Europe and, until recently, Brazil, budget cuts and political pressure have diminished universities’ ability to function as autonomous public goods. And in the United States, where the Cold War once gave rise to the robust expansion of higher education, we are now witnessing a retreat – where collaboration is no longer governed by scholarly merit alone but by the shifting calculus of strategic alignment.

As geopolitical tensions intensify, the university becomes a strategic frontier – not merely a battleground of ideas, but a site of alignment, recruitment and defence. Artificial intelligence labs are evaluated not just for innovation but for dual-use potential.

Social science research is weighed for political implications. Even humanities programmes, once the domain of quiet critical reflection, are drawn into debates over patriotism, national narratives and cultural memory.

In this environment, universities are being forced to choose: between global relevance and national allegiance; between independent knowledge-making and state-sanctioned narratives.

This realignment threatens the pluralistic mission of higher education. A university that cannot host the world cannot serve the world. And one that censors for safety may find itself sacrificing truth for compliance.

As nation states reclaim the university as a political tool, the very idea of higher education as a neutral zone is under threat. The Harvard case shows us that even elite institutions are not immune. On the contrary, their visibility makes them more vulnerable – more likely to be turned into symbols, proxies and strategic platforms in larger battles over civilisation, security and sovereignty.

What we are witnessing, then, is not the failure of the global university; it is its strategic capture. And unless there is a concerted effort to defend its autonomy, the university may soon cease to be a civic sanctuary of inquiry and become, instead, just another instrument of power.

How fear rewires the academy

The university was once upheld as a sanctuary for free inquiry, protected by norms of tenure, academic freedom, and the moral imperative of truth-seeking. But in an era of algorithmic surveillance, digital vetting, and ideological policing, that sanctuary is rapidly becoming an illusion. What is emerging in its place is the ‘intelligence university’ – an institution shaped as much by what it knows as by who is watching.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the US Department of Homeland Security’s demand that Harvard submit protest activity records of international students to maintain its SEVP certification. The move was part of a broader Trump administration effort to tighten control over campus activities, especially protests involving international students.

The logic is unmistakable: knowledge production must now pass through a filter of loyalty and security. The academy, once tasked with questioning power, is being reoriented toward serving it.

As with geopolitical power, this is not a uniquely American story. In China, university informant systems encourage students to report politically sensitive comments made by professors in class. In Iran, scholars critical of the regime are routinely barred from teaching or publishing, and many are monitored both at home and abroad.

In Turkey, academics accused of supporting Kurdish rights or protesting state appointments have faced arrests, job loss and surveillance without legal recourse.

Even democratic states are not immune. In France, intelligence agencies have pressured universities to report on Middle Eastern students and their associations. In India, protest organisers face sedition charges. These trends chill curiosity and push institutions into self-censorship.

Surveillance does more than monitor. It rewires the university from within. Faculty pre-emptively revise syllabi to avoid flagged topics. Students hesitate before joining a protest, writing a paper on a controversial issue or choosing a research question that might draw scrutiny.

Scholars begin self-censoring not because they are told to, but because they know someone is watching. What emerges is not silence but simulation: the performance of inquiry within an invisible architecture of constraint.

This is the epistemic cost of surveillance. It reshapes not just what can be said, but what can be thought, imagined or pursued. When universities internalise the logic of monitoring, they cease to be spaces of intellectual risk and become zones of reputational management and behavioural predictability. Risk aversion replaces revelation. Compliance replaces courage.

In this new reality, academic freedom is no longer threatened by censorship alone. It is eroded by infrastructure – cameras, code, funding criteria and institutional protocol – that renders the entire university visible, sortable and governable. The future of knowledge will not be decided solely by who teaches or publishes but by who is watched – and who watches back.

What’s next?

What happens when the university, long celebrated as a bridge across cultures, a crucible of ideas, and a steward of global dialogue, becomes a border itself?

We are entering an era where the global university is beginning to fracture – not because of failure, but because of success. In a world increasingly defined by suspicion, nationalism and surveillance, the very features that made the university valuable – its openness, diversity and epistemic independence – are now treated as vulnerabilities. This is not a distant future. It is already unfolding.

Across the globe, we are witnessing the emergence of parallel knowledge regimes. One bloc – aligned loosely with liberal democracies – continues to promote academic openness, transnational research and norms of critical inquiry. The other, tied to authoritarian or illiberal states, prioritises ideological fidelity, state-aligned knowledge production and information sovereignty.

What emerges is not a Cold War in military terms but a Cold War of the mind, in which knowledge flows are surveilled, restricted or redirected through geopolitical filters.

Consider the implications: a climate scientist publishing on emissions in China may find their work blocked or discredited; a human rights scholar from India may be denied a visa to a European conference; a US university may choose to sever partnerships with a Middle Eastern institution due to political risk.

These are not hypotheticals. They are the early signals of a coming epistemic bifurcation, where universities no longer share a common horizon of truth-seeking but are divided into zones of controlled curiosity.

Moreover, digital platforms are accelerating this divide. As governments invest in national AI models, censorship protocols and academic firewalls, the digital university becomes balkanised. Open-access journals become geo-blocked. Research databases mirror national ideologies. Even student exchanges – once a linchpin of global peacebuilding – become sites of vetting, propaganda and ideological export.

This fragmentation threatens more than collaboration. It threatens the very moral architecture of education. For centuries, the university stood as a fragile yet vital site where ideas could be debated without being criminalised, where doubt was not punished but pursued. That ideal is now under siege – not only from autocrats, but from bureaucrats, donors and algorithmic moderators who quietly reshape what can be taught, funded or imagined.

If we fail to defend the university as a shared intellectual ecosystem, we risk reducing it to a credential mill in a fragmented world: efficient, compliant and intellectually diminished.

Another path

But there is another path. In this moment of fracture, universities can choose not just to resist, but to reimagine. They can build new coalitions across regions committed to pluralism. They can create transnational research sanctuaries protected from political interference. They can teach students not just to memorise facts but to navigate complexity, live with contradiction and act with ethical clarity in a polarised age.

This is not idealism – it is survival. For if we do not reassert the purpose of the university as a place where knowledge serves humanity, not the state, then we will have surrendered one of civilisation’s last truly cosmopolitan institutions.

The question is no longer whether the university will change. It is whether it will change in service of fear or in pursuit of freedom.

When we once imagined the year 2025, we dreamt of something better. We imagined a world more open, more connected, more humane – an age of digital enlightenment where education would dissolve borders, amplify marginalised voices and usher in a new era of planetary solidarity.

The tools seemed within reach: global networks, open science, artificial intelligence and the mass democratisation of knowledge.

Instead, we find ourselves in a world turning inward. Surveillance expands while trust contracts. Borders harden – around identities, nations and disciplines. Universities, once the hopeful engines of cosmopolitanism, are being redefined as battlegrounds: for ideology, for sovereignty, for control over what may be known or said.

The very tools designed to liberate knowledge – networks, algorithms, digital platforms – are now repurposed for sorting, restricting and watching. The infrastructures of openness have become instruments of sorting, monitoring, and exclusion.

Why is this happening now? Because we never fully reckoned with the fragility of liberal ideals. We assumed that knowledge would remain free once it was digitised. That global exchange would sustain itself once it was profitable. That truth would win by virtue of its elegance. But truth has enemies. Openness has adversaries. And democracy, as we now see, does not defend itself.

And yet – precisely because of this moment – there is hope.

For the university is not merely what it has become. It is what it might yet be. A moral compass in a disoriented world. A refuge for contested truths. A laboratory for pluralism, where disagreement is not a threat but a form of care. But to reclaim this role, the university must do more than defend itself. It must transform itself from within and in coalition with others.

It must speak when silence is safe. It must dissent when compliance is rewarded. It must educate not only for employment but for democratic resilience. It must teach students not just to adapt, but to imagine – and to resist.

The attack on Harvard’s ability to enrol international students is not just an institutional crisis; it is a bellwether case. A moment when the world’s most powerful university was made to kneel – not for what it did, but for what it represents: porous borders, shared knowledge, and cosmopolitan belonging. What happens now will echo across institutions everywhere.

So let us be clear: this is not a time to retreat. It is a time to reassert why universities matter, whom they serve, and what values they must defend. If we allow the university to be governed by fear, we will lose more than funding or visas. We will lose one of the last places where humanity can think beyond itself. And in that loss, the dream of a better 2025 becomes not a delay but a burial.

James Yoonil Auh is the chair of computing and communications engineering at KyungHee Cyber University in South Korea. He has worked across the United States, Asia and Latin America on projects linking ethics, technology and education policy.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.