On May 27, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an order to US embassies to suspend interviews with applicants for student visas until further notice.

Beneath the banner of “combating technology leakage” lies the West’s good old fear—fear of what it itself has created: a Global South that has learned to speak its language better than the West ever could. The university, once the final temple of “soft power,” is now its last line of defense. For if yesterday’s cable-carriers are suddenly designing satellites, what remains of the illusion of cultural superiority?

“Decoupling” sounds like a sterile technocratic term, but in essence—it’s inverted decolonization. It is an attempt by the metropole to sever ties with the so-called “periphery,” a construct of its own making, simply because the periphery no longer wishes to depend on it—even in exchange for emphatically loyal undergraduate essays. Washington is constructing a digital version of migration-based racism: “we need you—but only as long as you stay beneath the ceiling of innovation.”

Why American Universities Are Losing Key Students and Revenue

For the Anglo-American academy, which for centuries thrived on the rent of colonial circulation of minds, the outflow of Chinese students has become more than just a financial pitfall. It is the collapse of a prestigious illusion—the belief that knowledge flows only westward. For decades, U.S. universities........

© New Eastern Outlook