I sat spellbound. The man across the table was relating how he had wrangled his way into a detention center where he suspected torture was being committed. He convinced the guard to leave the room, quickly photographed the horrific scarring on a detainee’s back, smuggled the film out and showed the photos to a judge.
“The judge roundly condemned the torture, which was illegal but seldom exposed,” my companion explained. “Detainees were denied any access to their families and lawyers until they were charged. That could take several months, and by then the marks of torture would no longer show. But this time we had unexpectedly won a case granting access to the detainee.” He paused, then added, “The judge directed the offending security policemen to be prosecuted. The exposure stopped the torture.”
The man across from me was Dave Smuts, a white lawyer who had led the legal challenges to the apartheid regime in place in Namibia when it was under South African rule. Smuts is now a Namibian Supreme Court justice. He also was an international student at Harvard.
As the Trump administration curbs international student visas, I wonder about the cost. As a humanitarian aid worker, I often met foreigners who credit studying in the U.S. with the important work they now do. They also speak glowingly of the U.S. once they’re home.
A Bosnian official, fresh from a mid-career program in the U.S., admiringly recalled, “In America, people actually stop at red lights, even when no one is coming. They believe in the rule of law. That’s how their society gets ahead.”
The U.S. will be poorer without international students. We lose their perspectives and enriching campus conversations. We lose the financial benefits of their tuition and other spending. We lose the leading edge they bring us in science, business and the arts.
It’s time to slow down and think these changes through. We are losing too much.
Melinda Burrell, Ph.D.,is a former humanitarian aid worker and now trains on the neuroscience of communication and conflict.
