Jamus Lim criticises Trump administration's move to bar Harvard from enrolling international students
SINGAPORE: Workers' Party MP Associate Professor Jamus Lim has criticised the Trump administration's recent decision to revoke Harvard University's ability to enrol international students, calling the move 'utterly wrongheaded and counterproductive.'
In a Facebook post on Friday morning, Lim weighed in on the unfolding controversy between the U.S. government and the Ivy League institution. The decision comes after Harvard reportedly resisted demands to furnish information on certain foreign students. U.S. authorities responded by framing international enrollment as a 'privilege, not a right,' and accused the university of fostering a hostile and racially biased environment.
Lim, an economics professor by training and long-time advocate of balancing foreign and local student intake in Singapore, expressed concern over what such coercive policy signals for education systems globally. While reiterating his support for prioritising Singaporean enrolment in local universities, especially in high-demand sectors like technology, he warned against 'extreme, self-defeating policies' that isolate institutions from the international academic community.
'Shutting out top global talent will ultimately undermine competitiveness, deprive students of diverse perspectives, and break the cycles of mutual knowledge exchange,' he wrote. 'For any institution whose objective is to advance the frontiers of human understanding, this is not only detrimental; it is destructive.'
Lim emphasised the importance of maintaining a 'reasonable balance' between foreign and local presence in schools and workplaces, cautioning against adopting exclusionary measures driven by political expediency. He cited ongoing legal developments in the U.S., including a temporary injunction granted by a court, as reasons to continue monitoring the situation.
'There is always more to learn from the ideas of those that are different from us, and we shut those out at our peril,' Lim added.
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What is happening to US-China competition today is basically this: Both countries are overcompensating for years of engagement in which international cooperation have led to both having to make compromises domestically. From Washington's perspective, countries have gotten a free ride on its provision of public goods while Americans have not benefitted from US-led globalisation. As one foreign diplomat told me in a conversation during the SLD, the days of 'happy globalisation' is over. International relations have repercussions at home and domestic politics now frequently spill into foreign policy. According to the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, states are constantly engaged in a domestic-international interplay in their relations with each other whereby leaders must fulfil both international and domestic agendas. Ironically, Mr Trump has taken a leaf from the Chinese government playbook and its chief exponent of strongman politics - President Xi Jinping himself. 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