Varsities row: What's Trump afraid of?

People hold up signs during the Harvard Students for Freedom rally in support of international students at the Harvard University campus in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 27, 2025. [AFP] Many young men and women from across the globe harbour a dream of studying in the US. The dream is fuelled by American soft power emanating from movies and the media. In Kenya, this dream got an impetus just before independence when a group of Kenyans were admitted to American universities to prepare for leadership roles. They included Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai. Less talked about is that the airlift was an East African affair.This single act shows how the US plays the long game, with China catching up. The new crop of leaders imbibed American thinking on capitalism, trade, consumption, and values. This act planted the seeds of Kenya's market-oriented economic system and was a bulwark against communism. Some Kenyans studied in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, but they never became a critical mass. The airlift quickly created the critical mass of leaders. The term critical mass is borrowed from nuclear physics and denotes the smallest fissionable material, such as uranium, that can start a chain reaction leading to either the production of heat for power generation in nuclear reactors or, if uncontrolled, a nuclear bomb. Hopefully, you did not sleep through your physics lessons. Americans stealthily "took over" our national leadership from Britons who had ruled the country for 68 years. The high noon in their long game was the election of an American-educated president, Uhuru Kenyatta. There is some pride in educating presidents or leaders from other countries. The UK is slowly regaining its foothold in attracting Kenyan students. Could it be the Brexit effect? After the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), dozens of future leaders from former Soviet republics were airlifted to the US; I met some in the Deep South.When the USSR split into 15 republics, none had the capacity and maybe the will to influence the next generation of global leaders through education. Why was there no airlift to the USSR? Lately, some Kenyans, driven by affordability, are returning to the old Soviet Union and its satellite countries like Georgia and Hungary, but a trickle compared with the US, UK, or Australia.The age of the US universities and careful branding have endeared them to a global audience. This has created an aura of mystique. Check how many cars in our mall's parking yards have stickers from American universities.Everyone wants to be associated with American universities, creating a demand that leads to higher fees and lower admission rates (Economics 101). The competition for the prestigious American universities, among them the eight Ivies and top flyers like MIT and Stanford, is very fierce. They have admission rates of less than five per cent. The demand is intergenerational, with graduates from these elite universities keen on their children attending the same universities. I noted a few graduates walking up to the podium with their children at this year's Harvard graduation ceremony for inspiration, perhaps? One brought his father. I followed that graduation because I had some genetic links to it.In the US, foreign students pay higher fees. This is good income for the universities. It can be interpreted as the "goodwill" you pay to start a business on a new premise. American universities have built that reputation over the years. Students out of state also pay higher fees than their in-state counterparts.Why is the US government (read, Donald Trump) at loggerheads with some of these hallowed universities, accused of antisemitism and wokeness? It sounds more like a cultural war. Wokeness is about being sensitive to social issues such as justice or racism.The deeper truth emerged when the American government put the brakes on student visa applications, mentioned ties to the Chinese Communist Party in some universities, and the study in critical areas, presumably Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).Is the government's focus on elite universities part of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) project? Is the presence of foreign students studying critical areas seen as a threat to America's competitiveness? This is a paradox. Foreign students bring new thinking and innovations that make American universities cutting-edge and prestigious. If they left, that edge would be blunted.Many stay on H1B and other visas. Others leave with their knowledge and skills. It's probably this latter group that worries proponents of the MAGA movement. They could take knowledge that could give American competitors the next Google, Tesla, or Meta. Yet immigrants have been disproportionately more entrepreneurial than the rest of the population. Who started Google or Tesla? It seems American key strength in higher education is also its weakness. In the coming days, the contest between the government and American elite universities will continue in courts and public opinion. That might remake them; everyone hopes for better. The government holds the purse strings; the universities, the brains. They need a meeting point. Should whoever pays the piper also call the tune in higher education?Are there any lessons for us, and should the government use its financial muscle to control universities? How much freedom should universities get in carrying out their critical missions of preparing the next generation to think and solve national problems? Should we put academic freedom in the constitution, like in Germany?Most of the prestigious American universities are private, with less reliance on public coffers, except for critical areas like research and development. Is Kenya about to get into this era, and which universities will be our Ivies? If we branded and funded our universities, we could become a magnet for students from all over the world and their dollars. Our universities are operating below capacity. That can be a major export and source of soft power. What is the source of Kenya's soft power? We hope the current funding crisis and the wrangles in some of our institutions of higher education are a sign of a new beginning, a renaissance. Out of that, we hope, new institutions will emerge, more global in outlook, more prestigious, and catalysts of economic growth and socio-cultural transformation.

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