Manu Joseph: Why Trump is right about student activism in America

Even if they gain admission somehow, find the money somehow, are granted a visa somehow, there is no guarantee their welcome will not be revoked. The US government has stated that it will revoke student visas for sloppy attendance. Students fear that a misdemeanour—like getting involved in a scuffle—could annul their visa. 

At the time of writing, the US government has announced a global pause on all student visa interviews. This, it says, is to allow officials more time to screen applicants more thoroughly, including social media scans. As a result, for the first time in decades, the young in all developing nations have been denied their American dream.

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President Donald Trump wants a closer look at international students before letting them enter the US because he does not want agitators. He does have a point. 

As US secretary of state Marco Rubio said, “If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and… you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus—we’re not going to give you a visa." 

Like activism in general, student activism is not the moral force its noble themes of struggle may suggest.

There is something absurd about foreign students from developing nations protesting for democracy and other human values in the US. Many can afford an American education because they are beneficiaries of inequality. Some of that wealth is  probably from corruption and oligarchies. A few student activists admit such ‘contradictions’ in their lives. Their hyper-morality often has the quality of a luxury product that seems to fill a void in their lives. Often, it is also an extension of a right-wing agenda. What is conservatism in one region, such as Arab nationalism, may appear to be a liberal struggle in another.

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For instance, on an American campus, it could be expressed as humanitarian outrage on behalf of Palestinians. The cause is also dear to many student activists who are neither Arab nor Muslim, because it can be a thrill to back the weak. Israel’s great PR problem has always been that it is a prosperous, formidable nation—a place that makes for bad photojournalism.

The liberal arts outrage against Israel on American campuses is decades-old and an important part of the Palestinian movement. In fact, it was probably part of the calculations of Hamas in its terror strikes against Israel. Not surprisingly, just hours after Hamas massacred over 1,000 Israelis on 7 October 2023, there were mass student ‘protests’ in America against Israel. In the past, such protests have often been effective in controlling Israeli retribution. This time, they failed.

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There is a Jewish view that student movements against Israel are a form of anti-semitism. You may think this is excessive extrapolation. But they have a point.

At least a strand of the Palestinian movement in America may be interpreted as anti-Jewish. A shade of anti-semitism seems to persist in the US even today, with envy of Jewish prosperity and influence mixed with an old religious prejudice that has lasted for centuries. So, Jews are not wrong in classifying a strand of the Palestinian movement as an expression of anti-semitism.

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Also, students might be too young and naïve to see how they may be getting used as a political instrument by unseen handlers. Most street movements appear to be righteous battles waged by the oppressed or on behalf of them. But behind the scenes, activism is usually a clash between two unseen elites, somewhere, who need to recruit the naive to fight for them.

In some cases, it appears, activism could also be a magnet for people with depression. Their conditions could be made worse in a pit of ceaseless bad news, as wars produce. Through the strife of the wronged across the world, some activists may thus be seeking a grander purpose for personal dejection. In that way, their unnameable sorrow finds a name.

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There is also something amusing about student protests for democracy in America. For decades, the US exported student activism to other nations, apparently to create favourable chaos as part of a larger project to control those regions. Student activism, though central to US political life when practised by US citizens, was also in some ways a foreign-policy strategy. That is one reason the American right-wing takes it seriously. They know it can work. It can create chaos.

The Trump administration does not want a particular kind of migrant, and to achieve that objective, it has changed how America is perceived by non-Americans, especially students. 

There are other advanced economies that have excellent colleges, like the UK. But those nations are mostly in limbo, or the slow decay of old money. None of them has the vibrant promise of America. Yet, the American dream might be over for the Indian student.  

The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, ‘Decoupled’