Rehabilitation
In the wake of Harvard’s SEVP certification being withdrawn, revoking its ability to issue visa documents to new students and scholars and throwing current F and J visa holders into limbo, what has stuck out to me most is the dichotomy in response.
Outside of higher education, crickets. What the average American thinks about international students is sobering. As someone who grew up in rural America, I can say with confidence that many people I grew up with have never met or truly engaged with a person from another country unless they were employing them as laborers or going to the local Mexican restaurant. They are not thinking about visa policy, research ecosystems, or diversity metrics. To them, the withdrawal of SEVP certification from Harvard (if they even see this news) isn’t a scandal but a leveling of the playing field and a long-overdue punishment of an elite institution they have never seen as theirs.
Inside our community? Statements, both personal and organizational, flooded social media with all the right words: “clear,” “strong,” “unwavering,” “outraged.”
Yes, this decision was outrageous. Unprecedented. Statements alone are not action, though. They are not strategy. Tell me what exactly you are doing about it. I want to hear it, and I want us to be a team.
This is a public execution for the purpose of deterrence. A scare tactic with real casualties. An elite institution with the ability to fight back was selected for its symbolic weight, not because its conduct was uniquely egregious. The message was simple and brutal: no one is safe. In a statement, Secretary of DHS Kristi Noem said, “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students…. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
In criminal law, general deterrence relies on public punishment to scare others into compliance, but decades of research shows that public punishment does not serve that goal. The death penalty does not reduce crime. Fear doesn’t teach or transform. With all the strong feelings, hope, and determination I saw yesterday, we have the opportunity to adopt a rehabilitation framework, not for us as institutions who did anything wrong, but as a collective response mechanism. We must shift from fear-based silence or fear-mongering performative nonsense to coordinated, resilient, and reformative action.
How do we do this when we fear speaking out? How do we do this when institutions are being told that enrolling international students is a "privilege, not a right,” and that “this should serve as a warning to all universities”?
We can start by recognizing that this isn’t a time for solo acts or symbolic outrage. Rehabilitation demands collaboration, courage, and infrastructure. We need state-by-state, region-by-region alliances, not just national associations. Quiet consortia of institutions committed to shared protocols, risk assessments, and mutual support can become informal coalitions of resistance. We need circuits of policy literacy, legal backup, and strategic silence when needed but shared strength when the moment calls.
We invest in our legal immune systems. Many universities rely solely on outside immigration counsel or central legal offices that are unfamiliar with F and J intricacies. International offices should advocate for in-house legal expertise on SEVIS compliance, the INA, Constitutional protections, and the implications of political speech. Most of our compliance frameworks were designed for bureaucratic accuracy, but we need them ready for regulatory hostility.
We shouldn’t assume that our presidents and provosts know the stakes. Leadership often doesn’t understand the full scope of SEVIS compliance or the vulnerability of international students. This is no fault of their own. We should use this moment to educate our campus leaders, if we aren’t already, by creating emergency playbooks for SEVP revocation, visa freezes, and media inquiries. We should turn our campus leadership into prepared actors.
We need to hardwire internationalization into the bones of our institutions. Accreditation cycles should not ask whether we are international but how that internationalization is safeguarded. If it is in the mission statement, the general education curriculum, the budget priorities, and tenure and promotion, it’s harder to erase.
We document the chilling effects. Document the silencing, threats, and funding consequences. A national, anonymized repository where those of us being threatened or censored can log what is happening. Over time, these patterns become data. These data are essential for legal action, journalistic exposure, and policy reform.
This is bigger than Harvard. Current and prospective F and J students across the U.S. and overseas are watching this unfold in fear. What message are we sending them? We should create digital toolkits, webinars, and legal Q&As that explain their rights and our institutions’ contingency plans because transparency builds trust and retention.
If our development offices can raise money for naming rights and buildings, they can fund a legal defense and rapid response fund for international students and scholars. I can see it now, a new line in the campaign: “Support Global Safety and Academic Freedom.” I guarantee you have faculty and staff who will give.
Lastly, the economic value tool is too reductive, and $43 billion is budget dust. We have clung to it for relevance, but it is clear that it no longer moves the needle politically: “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.” stated Noem. The economic value of international students is being weaponized and used as a rationale for punishment, not support. Tuition revenue from international students is not seen as national benefit but as institutional indulgence. We should reimagine our systems to prioritize mutuality, belonging, and equity. Reimagine our recruitment models and stop speaking in abstracts, like mobility, excellence, talent pipelines, and “ethical recruitment” when the lived reality is often one of marginalization, extraction, and transactional engagement.
What is happening to Harvard wasn’t only about Harvard, it was about chilling the entire field into compliance and submission. But rehabilitation as a theory of justice asks not only whether someone is punished but also whether the system has the capacity to learn, adapt, and move toward wholeness.
We don’t have the luxury of waiting for Congress, nor can we expect a single court ruling to immunize us. Rehabilitation requires that we become the system that learns and that teaches others to do the same. Don’t just perform outrage but embody resistance. Stand up for all of us, quietly, maybe. Strategically, definitely. Stand nonetheless.
Let me know if you want to talk. I’ll be standing all next week at NAFSA.