In my first week’s blog post, I posed a series of questions that I hoped we would answer this semester. This week’s reading, which focused on internationalizing U.S. higher education, answered one of them: What role does an increasingly isolationist Republican Party play in shaping international higher education?

The United States is a country profoundly distrusting of centralized power, which goes all the way back to its founding following the American Revolution. This distrust of centralized power includes how the U.S. creates and implements higher education policy. Whereas most other countries have a central Ministry of Education type of office, the United States lacks a federal office that focuses exclusively on higher education. Instead, the main offices that handle higher education internationalization in the U.S. are the Department of State, Department of Education, and the Department of Defense (p. 4). Additionally, the National Science Foundation, state governments, and individual higher education institutions themselves are also major players when it comes to higher education internationalization in the United States.

Thus, while the U.S. does not have a centralized office that is solely responsible for handling higher education initiatives like most other countries, the federal government still has tremendous influence on higher education internationalization initiatives — both directly (congressional funding, visa policies, etc) and indirectly (foreign policy initiatives and setting the general political atmosphere). “In the absence of a broad federal policy, institutional internationalization and ‘foreign relations’ policies — and the resulting programs and initiatives — collectively constitute a substantial part of the United States’ de facto higher education internationalization policy landscape.” (p. 34).

This is where Donald Trump comes in.

Many polls are predicting he will become the Republican nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While I still think it’s highly unlikely that he has any chance of winning a general election, this campaign season has repeatedly defied traditional norms and expectations. So, what would a hypothetical President Trump mean for international higher education initiatives in the U.S.?

For starters, in his efforts to “make America great again”, he probably won’t put a high priority on realizing President Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, “a national effort designed to increase dramatically the number and diversity of composition of American students studying in China (p. 16-17)”, or the 100,000 Strong in the Americas presidential initiative, “the stated goal of which is to double student mobility (both inbound and outbound) between the U.S. and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean by 2020” (p. 17). Regarding incoming international students, his not-so-subtle racism and immigrant-bashing would likely turn off many prospective international students, who, as we saw in Madeline Green’s article from week 1, already prefer to study abroad in other countries besides the U.S. When it comes to international research and scholarly initiatives, his isolationist rhetoric seems to suggest that Americans need to be looking inward, rather than outward, to solve pressing 21st century challenges.

In the absence of an official national policy towards higher education internationalization in the United States, our national leaders have a tremendous direct and indirect impact in shaping and implementing U.S. higher education initiatives and policies. I went abroad in 2007 and again in 2009 and the reaction when I told people I was American couldn’t have been more different. In 2007, the minute I mentioned I was American I often got an eye roll and lecture about our foreign policy mishaps. In 2009, by contrast, people seemed genuinely happy about President Obama being in the White House and in general had a more positive outlook towards the United States. A report from PEW backs this up, finding that overall ” President Obama’s global popularity is much higher than his predecessor, George W. Bush.” This isn’t necessarily a Democrat vs. Republican thing, though Republicans should take note that policies favored by Democrats are more generally aligned with international sentiments.

Here’s to hoping that our next president–whoever he or she may be–continues to follow President Obama’s lead in promoting and expanding U.S. higher education internationalization.