There is no doubt that enlarged government bureaucracies need pruning – such as an enlarged forest that suffocates light and life under it. Universities often lost their way, sponsoring ideological extremism and bearing the open challenge of civil rules. Harvard and other elite institutions enabled leftist extremism, including support for enthusiasm and annoying height in anti -Semitism. He suffered freedom of expression, and the accountability declined. These institutions must hold the laws of the United States and moral standards.
But President Trump’s response – financing for thorny research Targeting international students– It is not like. It illuminates fire on the entire forest. In this process, it threatens the roots of American scientific leadership, economic prosperity and global influence.
The global competitiveness of the United States has always relied on its universities – its openness to talents and its commitment to research. From a chip to the revolution of biotechnology, many innovations have identified modern America in academic laboratories. It was backed by wonderful minds derived from all over the world and maintained by public financing. All search vaccines arose in Google (UCL) and Google (Stanford), GPS (MIT) and MRNA (Upenn) in American universities. As well as the act of breakfast in clean energy, artificial intelligence and cancer treatments-such as genes and immune remedies. Now, due to Trump’s actions, life -saving cancer research is stopped in the middle of the road where federal grants are frozen and laboratories are closed.
Harvard University, which has long been a beacon for international scientists, has its authority to register foreign students. More than 2.7 billion dollars In financing federal research has been frozen. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced the reluctance of acceptance and demobilization of research employees. The University of California system is involved in lawsuits to stop scholarship discounts in the National Institutes of Health. All this will greatly harm the American scientific progress.
Losses are not only academic departments – they include cancer experiences, climate research, vaccine development, national security projects in quantum computing and cybersecurity. Hundreds of laboratories across the country report frozen budgets, canceled contracts, and leave the best talents. Institutions such as Jones Hopkins, Stanford, and Michigan University have warned that federal fundamental fundamental research, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy are now dangerous.
Although the federal judge has temporarily prevented the administration’s attempt to strip Harvard from its authority to register international students, the damage has already occurred. Do not decline legal decline The effect of a chill for him on global talents Or already disrupting the ongoing research programs. The uncertainty alone weakened America’s position as a global destination for advanced innovation.
This decline is particularly tragic given the historical achievements of American research institutions. Not only gave us public investments in the university science, medical miracles and digital revolutions, but the entire industries. NIH and NSF funding helped empty biotechnology, clean technology and nanoparticles. Darpa GPS and Early Internet granted us. These are the roots of the US innovation economy. Their undermining is similar to tearing the basis of the mid -building skyscraper.
And not only the financing of the attack on the attack – it’s the people who bring this research to life. For decades, the United States has enjoyed the largest free lunch in the history of education and entrepreneurship: the smartest students from India and China, and came all over the world to study here. Not only did they learn. They stayed. They built companies. They created jobs.
Immigrants played the role in almost every American success story in the last century. More than half of the startups in the Silicon Valley were established by immigrants. The 2022 report from the National Policy Corporation found that 55 % of the emerging companies in Unicorn in America – estimated at more than one billion dollars – began by immigrants. This list includes companies such as TimingGoogle, IntelPaypal, accidentAnd Enlargement.
In science and medicine, the pattern is the same. Researchers born abroad are inadvertently represented among the Nobel Prize winners in the United States, among faculty members in leading universities, and among the inventors behind the patents provided by the best American institutions. More than 75 % of patents from American research universities list at least one inventor from abroad.
However, the Trump administration has come out by preventing these particular shareholders. During the epidemic, I tried to cancel the visas of international students who attend the classes online. Visa Treated delays have become routine. High skills immigrants, including PhD and post -PhD, face long waiting, dark rules, and high uncertainty. The result? The drain has become slow -moving brain as a stampede. The talented researchers are heading to Europe, Canada and Australia instead.
I warned about this scenario in written Immigration More than a decade ago. At that time, it was a warning story. Today, it is a fact that is revealed. We are witnessing a deliberate dismantling of the American innovation ecosystem – one visa and one research grant simultaneously.
To be clear, not all criticism of universities is unjustified. There is swelling. There is a waste. Some institutions failed to support the principles of academic neutrality. But this does not justify blind destruction. There is a difference between trimming a tree and igniting the garden.
Even from a purely economic perspective, these policies cannot be defended. International students alone Contributing more than 40 billion dollars annually to the US economy. They pay full tuition fees. It rents housing. They spend their communities. Many continue to become entrepreneurs, taxpayers and work creators. Meanwhile, research financing supports hundreds of thousands of jobs in each state. It operates startups, connects regional economies, and pushes tomorrow’s industries. The weakening of this basis is not only harmful to universities, but also weakens America.
The harsh paradox is that these policies will harm Trump’s self as defending: working Americans. When universities lose research, they cut faculty and employees. When international students go to another place, local companies – from cafes to residential complexes – go beyond success. When the breakthroughs are delayed or lost, America loses a competitive advantage – and the jobs and industries that follow.
China does not need to overcome America to win the innovation race. It only needs to watch the United States reveal its progress. This is exactly what is happening.
However, I did not lose hope.
The United States has previously stumbled – and corrected the path. The violent reaction of these policies grows. Universities are fighting again. Business leaders speak publicly. Courts enter. I hope this is just bypassing another Trump – heated, yes, but in the end it is vice versa.
America’s strength has always came from its openness: to new people, to bold ideas and investment in the future. Immigrants and granting research that built the Internet, were ill, and launched the industries that operate our economy today. If we remember that – and act on it – this will not be the beginning of America’s retreat, but it is a painful entrance on the path of renewal.
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