An exit interview with NAFSA’s Esther Brimmer
Esther D. Brimmer couldn’t have known the challenges she would face when she accepted the job as executive director and chief executive of NAFSA: Association of International Educators in October 2016.
A few weeks later, Donald J. Trump was elected president. On the day of Brimmer’s first speech to a group of NAFSA volunteer leaders, he announced a ban on travelers from a half-dozen predominantly Muslim countries, stranding students and scholars around the globe and making clear that his America First policy positions weren’t simply campaign rhetoric.
Brimmer found herself leading a professional association whose members had to make the case for the work that they do. But her six years at NAFSA’s helm were not just about defending international education from policies that threatened to undercut it. She also had to steer the group through the Covid-19 pandemic, when global mobility was frozen.
Brimmer will step down from NAFSA at the end of the year (a successor has yet to be named). A foreign-policy expert and academic who served as an assistant secretary of state, she will join the Council on Foreign Relations as a senior fellow in global governance.
Brimmer sat down recently with Latitudes to talk about taking a more inclusive approach to international education, making tough choices, and higher education’s role in solving global problems. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Congratulations on your new role.
What’s exciting is that it’s an opportunity to bring together people who are thinking about how you solve problems. To be able to convene people from different countries with very different views at this time is really important because the principles that underlie international society are under question again.
I spent the first part of my career working on the question “How can you enhance cooperation internationally?” It doesn’t have to all be a Hobbesian world of violence. What are the structures that build peace and human well-being? Some of those are formal institutions. Others are habits of cooperation. International education is one of the best examples. Being able to work on these issues of how you bring together people as students and scholars, it’s part of building the positive side of international relations. But at this stage, unfortunately, we do have to go back and defend some of the principles.
What was that like at NAFSA? And what did you learn from the experience?
In October 2016, I accepted the job, but I was teaching, I needed to finish the semester. I remember asking, Is this a change-management job? The answer was, No, the field is flourishing, just build on that. And of course the world changed in November 2016. We already had a hint; we already had the Brexit vote that summer. Elements of disorder were already beginning to appear.
The job shifted underneath you. As a result, were there things on your to-do list you were never able to get to?
There’s dealing with an unfriendly administration, and then there’s the pandemic, and those are two different types of challenges. Dealing with an administration that is not predisposed to support your approach is not something new. Although I would argue that some of the views that the administration took were extreme, you have to make your political case. I was happy to see that international education actually has bipartisan support. I think this is where NAFSA’s work makes an especially important contribution to the public-policy space, being able to help members of Congress understand the economic contribution of international students and their families in their districts. Now, of course, there’s first a cultural and academic and scholarly and intellectual and community contribution. But if all else, you say, But you know there are this many jobs in your district because of international students?
The pandemic was a whole other level. We had to really rethink some of the things we were going to do and reprioritize.
We now have a new administration. Are there things you’ve been able to gain traction on?
One of the first things was the understanding that international education is a fundamental part of the way the United States engages internationally. There has been strong support for international education, things like the statement that was first jointly issued by the secretary of state and secretary of education in July of last year. That was remarkable, the most forthright statement regarding international education in two decades. And we were thrilled to see that. There’s a sense that you’re working in partnership, that the people leading diplomacy truly understand the importance of international education. There were very practical elements as well. For example, there was a real need to get visas for students coming from India, and the embassy in Delhi and the consulates worked incredibly hard to prioritize international students. The administration said they would do that, and they did.
Going forward, what are some of the most important trends for the field of international education?
There are important changes that were happening even before the pandemic. But I think that we can be well positioned to address them. For the past 20 years, we have had a world historical phenomenon, which is the return of China to great-power status after 500 years. Part of that, of course, was Chinese students wanting to be educated across the West. That was going to modulate anyway — we can all look at the population numbers. We also have to think about students’ economic constraints, and will there be an economic recession. We have to recognize sitting in the U.S. that there will be greater competition for international students. The number of international students is going to continue to grow, but there’ll be more places they can go.
One of the things the United States absolutely needs is a coherent, integrated, national strategy for international education that brings together different branches of government. Ideally, it would be led by the White House. Many of our competitors have thought very seriously about how they bring their whole-of-government resources. And we can do the same.
But I think there are also some great opportunities because it is more widely recognized now that the big issues have to be solved globally. The top issues like climate change — we all recognize that cannot be addressed by one country by itself. There are a lot of things we learned in the pandemic, but one is that we need to reconsider and recalibrate and reform the global public-health system. Both of those need global cooperation, and international education is part of that, cooperation on research is part of that.
It can be natural to focus on the challenges. What makes you hopeful for international education’s future?
The recognition that international education is for everyone is profound. That should not just be a fad of this year. It should be our fundamental approach about how we think about inclusion and education. International education should be part of the discussion of higher education, not just in an aisle by ourselves. We’re part of this larger question of what’s the role of higher education, and we contribute to that. And so it’s important that NAFSA also work with colleagues who are in the general higher-education space to say that we’re all thinking about what does a good education mean.
Why was this the right time for you to leave NAFSA?
We had gotten through the worst of the pandemic, and we were able to return to an in-person conference. We’re in good financial shape. It’s not easy to downsize. It’s very hard. But I thought it was crucial. You know the motto “Keep calm and carry on?” That was part of my job — not to get flustered, not to make rash decisions, not to be pushed into rash decisions. Working on the strategic plan, the membership structure, the transition to digital — all of these were things that were part of helping NAFSA to modernize for the future.
