Fear-driven US policy on Chinese students sends the wrong message
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Every time I talk to my Chinese friends at Harvard, I hear the same worry: 'Will I be able to visit my family this summer – and will I be allowed back to finish my degree?'
These are talented students who came here to learn, not get caught up in geopolitics. Yet now they're being treated like suspects simply because of the country they were born in.
In 2024, I helped start a US–China student dialogue club at the Harvard Kennedy School. We gathered students, invited outside speakers, and created a space for honest conversation without pushing any agenda. That's what higher education is supposed to be about. Yet just as we built bridges, a new policy now threatens to tear them down.
On May 28, the State Department announced plans to
revoke the visas of potentially hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, citing vague fears about ties to the Chinese Communist Party. That's not national security – it's collective punishment. And it's wrong.
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As a United States Army veteran who served in Iraq, I've seen what happens when fear shapes policy. I joined the army after 9/11 because I believed in public service, but I also saw how bad decisions, based on broad assumptions, can spiral out of control.
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