Today I saw something that genuinely shocked me. It made me think long and hard—an advertisement to “Study in English, in Germany”. 

Less than a year ago, I could not imagine an advertisement such as this in a place like Boston, considered by many as the college capital of America. But in the same week of Harvard’s commencement amongst a tense standoff with the Trump Administration, whoever made this ad knew what they were doing. The Trump Administration’s cuts to scientific research and blatant attacks on universities (e.g. Harvard), where it is attempting to ban international students, have shattered the status quo on American college campuses. Don’t get me wrong—there are absolutely problems of campus extremism and political groupthink to be dealt with—but at the end of the day, this is an attack on one of many areas of American society that remains firmly liberal: elite universities. From my point of view as a teenager who, in the coming two years, will have to navigate this mess of a landscape by myself, I am honestly not surprised by this. I truly believe that the Trump administration will hollow out any sort of appeal America has to international students, and the world’s brightest will take their minds elsewhere to get educated. I have always been somewhat reluctant to go to college here in the States, and what I have been seeing in the news in many ways only reaffirms that belief. While I do applaud Harvard for standing up against the Trump Administration, some others are not doing so bright, namely Columbia, which in recent weeks has had an outright capitulation to Trump. I read a great piece about it in New York Magazine, which is quite long but provides a great summary. While I am sure Trump does not care at all about the losses of jobs, research, academic and intellectual prowess, I do think that from a domestic perspective, he sees this as red meat for his base—and in some ways, liberal changes to universities made them prime targets for a political agenda such as that of President Trump. That’s the side Trump sees of this, not all of the intellectual fortitude, creativity, and innovation that the United States is going to lose.