The Longest Night
I wrote a long article last week about the recent addition to the travel ban that is in my drafts and may never see the light of day. The newest countries added are justified based largely on visa overstay rates, and the profoundly flawed way these rates are calculated should be understood. The systematic data collection failures inflate overstay statistics that then become weaponized against entire nationalities. The data reveal one injustice, but even perfect data would not change hearts already hardened by fear.
This truth connects to a deeper one: no one leaves home lightly. Every person seeking refuge and safety carries the weight of that departure. Every international student carries that weight. The families left behind, the dreams carried forward, the bridges built between worlds.
But explaining these realities feels like screaming into a void, or perhaps an echo chamber. I suppose I do have friends or acquaintances who might read something I write that would make them think, pause, or reconsider. Yet explaining that CBP's flawed departure tracking artificially inflates overstay rates doesn't move the needle when someone has personal or political reasons for supporting policies rooted in exclusion.
Instead, in the spirit of the season, I wanted to share an observation and then borrow words from Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
The winter solstice was Sunday. The longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The shortest day, the least amount of sunlight on our faces all year long. The winter solstice has been a time of reflection, gathering, and celebration for millennia. This year, I noticed that my mother's church held a "Longest Night" service. I had never heard of this, but apparently it has become common in Western Christian tradition for anyone experiencing sadness or grief, bringing light to the longest night of the year, acknowledging pain while pointing toward hope.
I've been part of fun winter solstice parties, holiday-themed, more witchy than reflective, but I do reflect on the solstice signaling that days will lengthen. It means more time outside, more time with friends on balconies, more time with the sun on our faces. It is truly a hopeful day to anticipate such good things. For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, experiencing their summer solstice, this same moment brings the promise of rest and renewal in different ways, a reminder that darkness and light always coexist.
While some of us wrestle with policy defeats and professional frustration, watching decades of progress toward understanding threatened, others face ultimate darkness. Children are killed by guns in the United States, by bombs in Gaza, by militias in Sudan, in different ways, for different reasons, but with the same irreversible consequence. People are persecuted for their beliefs, their skin color, their religion. Governments wield cruelty as policy. Nationalist and isolationist ideologies, when operationalized through policy, strangle peace and understanding worldwide. Our friends, colleagues, and students worry whether their very presence in the United States is as fragile as the rhetoric implies.
In this context, I want to offer what might seem like a deliberately hopeful observation, not naïve but chosen.
The winter solstice marks when we are farthest from the sun. It does not mean the sun has changed or produces any less light. Hope, like sunlight, remains constant. Always full, always present. We are simply farther from it sometimes. History shows us that these cycles can end. There will be peace. There will be change.
The arc bends toward justice but only when pushed. Unlike the solstice's inevitable return to light, change requires human agency. Hope exists constantly, but we must actively travel toward it. We can offer each other light in our longest nights.
For those of us in the United States, humanitarian responsibility does not require ideological agreement. It requires refusing the normalization of civilian suffering, whether abroad or at home. Supporting medical access, food security, clean water, the protection of children, and the basic dignity of our neighbors is a baseline human position.
Some things we can do:
Document every departure properly to combat false overstay narratives.
Share stories of international students' contributions to counter fear-based rhetoric.
Share stories that humanize migration rather than abstract it.
We can refuse euphemisms that sanitize harm, that turn civilian deaths into abstractions and human suffering into policy language. Precision in language is accountability.
And as citizens we can:
Demand that humanitarian aid not be conditional on political alignment.
Press representatives to protect civilian life and uphold international humanitarian law.
Support organizations, especially locally led ones, delivering medical care, food, and water to civilians in conflict zones.
Advocate for our neighbors. Be the squeaky wheel. Outspoken and compassionate.
Hope is not the absence of fatigue. We hold tensions when encouraging global engagement while borders tighten and maintaining effectiveness while our students are harmed by policy. Hope is choosing to light one candle rather than curse the darkness, even when your heart aches from repeated defeats.
It's no secret that I am one of Carl Sagan's biggest fans, owing my respect and awe to watching Cosmos with my dad as a kid on PBS. I recently saw his official social media share excerpts from an essay he and Ann Druyan wrote to George H.W. Bush in 1988:
Let’s stop talking about how “great” we are. This is the refrain of an unsure and insecure people. What would we think of someone who goes around telling everybody he meets how “great” he is? Claiming that America is “great” is far more significant if others say it. Let us make a society so just and free and productive that even our adversaries acknowledge its greatness.
Raise the quality of debate in American life. Lift the standards of discourse and analysis. Do not hide behind a phalanx of advisers. Cherish dissent. Talk to us. Be courageous; there are higher goals than re-election. Uphold the Constitution even when it seems to get in your way. Do not lie to us, and do not tolerate those who do. Stand with those who postpone short-term personal gain for the long-term benefit of the society. Give us hope.
Return us to the path of exploration and discovery, of innovation and openness to new ideas. Give America a dream of the future worthy of what we see in our daughter’s eyes. Broaden our perspective — beyond ethnic group and economic class, jingoist nationalism, race and religion—to embrace, for the benefit of all the children yet to come, the species and the planet.
Written in 1988! These words could have been written last March, or in 2016, or this morning. They demonstrate both a cycle and a constant: we continue hoping for our governments, our nations, our communities, ourselves. They remind us, daily, how far we still fall from the principles we claim to hold, even as we cherish the value that comes from diverse perspectives, welcome students whose courage is greater than our own and risk everything to learn, and work to broaden perspectives across every border we help students cross.
Let's model, in concrete ways, what we want for the world. In our offices, our classrooms, our advocacy, let's be the light that proves darkness is temporary. Let's document truth meticulously. Let's tell stories powerfully. Let's build bridges stubbornly. Let's keep the hope.
The longest night has passed. The light returns, incrementally, and only if we keep moving toward it.
Further, Relevant Reading
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
This is my immediate recommendation when anyone asks me for a book recommendation. What Strange Paradise is about the plight of displaced people from the point of view of a young boy. I cannot say it is my favorite book. The shift at the end broke me. It is devastating, and everyone should read it.