Latitudes

What a dispute over a trip to Israel means for study abroad

A dispute over a faculty-led trip from the University of Illinois at Chicago has thrust study abroad into the middle of one of the hottest-button campus debates, over academic ties with Israel.

A group of Palestinian students at the university has filed a federal civil-rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. They allege discrimination in the handling of the planned trip, much of which the university’s education-abroad office disputes, and in the decision to run a program in Israel in the first place because of the difficulty of traveling to and within the country for people of Palestinian heritage.

Members of the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine have called on students at colleges across the country to boycott study-abroad travel to Israel, and more than 1,000 people and organizations have signed a letter of solidarity.

In The Chronicle, I explore whether the controversy at UIC signals that study abroad could become a new front in efforts to organize an academic boycott of Israel. (You can click here to read the full article. Nonsubscribers who register for a free Chronicle account can read two articles a month, and your readership supports our journalism.)

Here are a few takeaways from my reporting:

Could protests against study abroad in Israel gain traction on other campuses? In addition to UIC, I found at least two other colleges where supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, have recently made education abroad a target. When Tufts University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine started a boycott campaign last year, it asked students to refuse to join campus groups or programs that “normalize or benefit” Israel, including study abroad there.

At Pitzer College, students are reviving an effort to end a study-abroad partnership between the California institution and the University of Haifa, in Israel. Back in 2019, a committee of faculty members and students actually voted to sever the relationship, but that decision was overturned by Pitzer’s president.

Marc Stern, chief legal officer for the American Jewish Committee, which opposes BDS, told me that protests against study-abroad programs are “another tactic in the long effort to get Israel made into an academic pariah.” Among those signing the UIC letter are Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at Ohio State, Rice, and Yale Universities and the University of California at Berkeley.

That said, Melissa Torres, president of the Forum on Education Abroad, an association of American and overseas colleges and independent study-abroad programs, told me that the issue of Israel-program boycotts was not pinging her group’s radar.

If such efforts spread, they could create new complications for study-abroad offices. Israel isn’t a prime destination for Americans going abroad — only about 3,500 studied there in 2018-19, the last full academic year before the pandemic hit — but efforts to halt study-abroad travel to the country could have broader implications. After all, governments around the world have put in place policies that students may disagree with or even find discriminatory because of religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or other beliefs or identities.

Education-abroad offices don’t typically set travel policy based on the stances of foreign governments. Take Russia, for example. While a handful of institutions publicly ended academic and student exchanges in Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, the widespread shutdown of study abroad to Russia is likely to be tied to something more basic: The U.S. Department of State put its highest-level travel advisory on Russia, telling Americans not to go there. Most colleges and study-abroad providers tie their travel policies to those official government warnings.

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, Kyle Rausch, executive director of education abroad, said one of his biggest frustrations was the lack of guidance from senior administrators about how to handle protests of the Israel program. (In a statement, the university said it would not comment on the dispute because of a potential pending investigation by the Education Department.) For college leaders, this could be a thorny debate to navigate, one that provokes strong emotions and has important implications for academic freedom.

The UIC incident is yet another reminder that geopolitics is increasingly intruding on the work international educators do. Tensions with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have affected global research collaborations, academic and cultural exchanges, foreign students on American campuses, and institutional partnerships abroad. In other words, scrutiny of colleges’ international engagement may have become the new normal.

Supreme Court won’t take up legal challenge to OPT

For international education, the news out of Washington this week is “crisis averted.”

In the U.S. House of Representatives, sponsors withdrew an amendment that would have zeroed out funding for the Fulbright program and other federal academic and cultural exchanges. And the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the legality of Optional Practical Training, the work program for international graduates of American colleges.

The justices did not give a reason for passing on the case, instead including it on a 46-page list of cases it would not hear in the new court term, which began this week.

Supporters hope the court’s action will end nearly a decade of legal disputes over the program, which allows recent graduates to stay in the United States and work for at least one and as many as three years after they complete their studies. About a quarter of all student-visa holders in the country are actually working through the program, which is also known as OPT.

The long-running challenge to the program was brought by a group of high-tech workers who have called it a jobs program in disguise, taking work from Americans. The heart of their legal argument was that the executive branch lacked the authority to establish the program or to expand it, as was done under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, most recently, Joe Biden.

In the fall of 2022, however, a federal appeals court rejected the tech workers’ lawsuit, writing in its decision that Congress “has never once questioned the statutory support” for the program.

Some Republican members of Congress had urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, as had 11 states. John Miano, a lawyer who brought the case, called the court’s action “the end of the road” for the legal challenges. He told a tech newsletter that it “strips Congress of the ability to control nonimmigrant programs” like OPT.

Business groups joined educational associations in filing briefs in support of OPT. They praised the Supreme Court’s action. Bernard Burrola, vice president for international, community, and economic engagement with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, called OPT critical to attracting international students in an increasingly competitive global market for talent. “It’s one of the arrows in our quiver to be competitive,” he said, noting that foreign students often want to gain on-the-job experience in addition to their degrees.

Both Burrola and Fanta Aw, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said they would like to see the U.S. government go beyond OPT to give international graduates a more direct path to permanent residence. The lack of such a policy can put the United States at a disadvantage to competitor countries like Australia and Canada.

Aw called the Supreme Court’s action an “important victory” but said higher-ed groups would also be watching another case that is to be decided during the court’s new term. It also deals with judicial precedent that recognizes federal agencies’ authority to interpret law and create programs.

Cuts in exchange programs are averted

Meanwhile, an amendment that would have eliminated all State Department funding for academic and cultural exchanges, including the flagship Fulbright program, was dropped from a spending bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

While the measure was included in a list of amendments approved for debate on the House floor, it never came up for a vote. The fact that the amendment’s sponsor, Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, withdrew it “indicates that it had little support and that our message was heard loud and clear,” said Mark Overmann, executive director of the Alliance for International Exchange, a group that represents organizations and providers that run exchanges and support global-education programming.

In addition to Fulbright, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supports the Gilman program, which expands study-abroad opportunities for low-income and first-generation American students; EducationUSA, a global network of centers that advise international students about studying at American colleges; and programs that bring young leaders from around the world to the United States.

While the poison-pill amendment did not appear in legislation that passed the House, Overmann noted that the bill would cut spending for educational and cultural exchanges by about 10 percent from current levels.

The House and the U.S. Senate must still agree on a final State Department appropriations bill for the 2024 fiscal year, which began on October 1.

Around the globe

Stanford University will pay $1.9 million to resolve allegations that it failed to disclose financial support from overseas sources, including foreign governments, on proposals for federal research grants

Legislation proposed in the House would block federal research funds from going to China and five other “countries of concern.”

A bipartisan resolution introduced in the Senate encourages American colleges to support educational ties with Taiwan as an alternative to programs funded by the Chinese government like Confucius Institutes, the language and culture centers.

Scientific collaboration between the United States and India could be a way to counter growing Chinese influence.

European universities and research institutes complain that the U.S. government’s new oversight requirements for foreign research partners of American grant recipients would create bureaucratic headaches, potentially weakening transatlantic scientific collaboration.

A bill proposed in the European Parliament could increase protections for academic freedom across the continent.

A federal judge ordered Chicago State University to release the academic records of President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria. His graduation from the college has become part of an electoral dispute in the African country.

The family of a Princeton University graduate student who disappeared while conducting doctoral research in Iraq said the university had not done enough to help secure her release from the militia believed to be holding her. The family accused the college of treating her abduction “like a PR problem.”

Kuwait University will impose gender segregation in its classrooms and other facilities.

Officials in the Indian state of Gujarat are moving to limit the power of student leaders at public universities there.

Myanmar’s military junta has detained family members of student dissidents in order to put pressure on the young activists.

Research spending in China increased by 10 percent last year, but the average amount going to scientists declined.

China is suffering from a brain drain. The United States isn’t benefiting.

Australia will ban commissions paid to international-recruitment agents when students transfer between educational institutions within the country, an effort to limit the poaching of students and to prevent visa holders from moving to “ghost colleges.”

I joined the Changing Lives Through Education Abroad podcast to talk about issues on the horizon for international education.

And finally …

Please join The Chronicle for our latest virtual forum on international education, Making International Agents Work for You. Two-thirds of American colleges report having partnerships with international-recruitment agencies to help attract foreign students, yet the colleges still may face problems choosing and working with recruiters. I’ll moderate a panel of global experts to discuss challenges and best practices for such relationships.

The session will be held on Thursday, October 12, at 2 p.m. EDT. The event is free, but registration is required.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on X or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.