I didn’t expect to learn about survival, sacrifice and cultural pride from a handful of milk curds, but that’s exactly what happened in my graduate classroom earlier this year.

A student from Kazakhstan had brought me a gift of qurt — salty-sour balls made from dried yogurt — and then laughed as I cautiously took a bite, comparing the taste to parmesan cheese.

Then the student told me the story of this food. In the Kazakh nomadic heritage, qurt was a staple: highly nutritious and shelf-stable for long journeys. But one student shared a deeper tale — how during a time of conflict, townspeople hurled qurt like stones into a refugee camp. To the guards, it looked like cruelty, and they were fine with that. But for the starving women and children inside, it was sustenance delivered in disguise.

That moment in class revealed the resilience, empathy and wisdom these students carried with them across borders.

This made me wonder: In today’s America, who are the camp guards, and who are the ones trying to keep these students nourished?

For nearly a month, universities across the United States had been fighting the

© The Hill