Who gets to define education—and for what purpose?
In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security abruptly revoked Harvard University’s certification to host international students (SEVP), putting the visa status of nearly 6,800 foreign students in jeopardy.
Alongside this move, the federal government suspended over $100 million in existing contracts, froze an additional $200 million in research grants, and is reportedly considering pulling more than $3 billion in future funding.
The reasons cited?
Harvard’s alleged failure to respond adequately to antisemitism on campus, the continuation of race-conscious admissions policies, and suspicions regarding the university’s connections with China.
While these justifications may sound procedural, the scale and speed of the measures amount to something closer to state-led punishment—a political crackdown on one of the world’s most symbolic institutions of academic freedom.
But this is not just about Harvard.
This is a moment to ask a much deeper question: Whose logic governs our learning?
The Hidden Logic of Global Education
For decades, elite American universities like Harvard have stood as the gold standard for global education.
They promise a cosmopolitan classroom where students from across the globe gather to exchange ideas across cultures, languages, and belief systems.
But has this model ever truly been neutral or free?
Behind the liberal veneer lies a more structured—and arguably imperial—logic.
Students learn to debate in English, to argue using American-style logic, to value liberal ideals. These are not inherently wrong. But they are also not universal.
Over time, many of us have unconsciously internalized the idea that to become a “global citizen” means to excel within an American educational framework.
We have prized degrees from Harvard or Stanford as passports to leadership—not just professionally, but intellectually and morally.
Echoes of Empire: A Postcolonial Perspective
This educational structure resembles, in surprising ways, colonial strategies of the past.
Consider France in the 19th and 20th centuries, when it educated select colonial subjects in Paris.
These students were taught French language, law, and philosophy.
When they returned home, they often became intermediaries—looked like locals, but thought like colonizers.
Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, among others, have described this as cultural assimilation through intellectual dominance—what some scholars now call the “epistemic violence” of empire.
The American model, though less overtly colonial, follows a similar logic: global students are trained in U.S.-centric frameworks.
Diversity is welcome—but only when it conforms to the dominant mode of reasoning and expression.
When States Weaponize Education
The recent actions by the Trump administration show how education remains deeply entangled with power.
In the eyes of the state, universities should behave in line with national interests: condemn what must be condemned, align policies with political ideologies, and sever ties deemed suspicious.
And when they don’t?
The state uses its levers—visas, grants, contracts—to discipline them.
In such a world, can we still claim that learning is free?
What Have We Been Taught to Value?
For decades, we’ve accepted—often unconsciously—that Harvard means excellence, that American education equals objectivity, that mastering the language of the empire is equivalent to mastering truth.
But what if we’ve been wrong?
What if we are now paying the price for handing over the cultivation of our brightest minds to one imperial center?
What if global education, as it’s currently structured, is not liberating us—but assimilating us?
The Final Question
Education is not just a tool for understanding the world.
It also frames how we see the world—and what we consider worth knowing.
The real question is not whether Harvard is being unfairly targeted.
The real question is:
Whose knowledge counts? Whose logic shapes our minds?
And are we brave enough to ask what it truly means to learn freely in a world still haunted by the shadows of empire? ■
【References】
- Edward Said, Orientalism（1978）
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks（1952）
- Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest（1989）
- Philip Altbach, “Globalization and the University,” Tertiary Education and Management, 2004
- Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus（1984）
First published on Substack on May 31, 2025 (JST). Archived here as part of the Fabio Caipirinha permanent archive (published on this site: Oct 15, 2026). Images from the original are omitted here pending rights clearance. Original: https://fabiocaipirinha.substack.com/p/harvard-under-siege-what-the-crackdown
Cover image: Widener Library, Harvard University, 1920 (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons — source)
