American Universities Should Put America First

Why is 27 percent of Harvard’s total student body foreign when there are hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans who could fill those spots instead?

Of all the questions raised by the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement on Thursday that it would no longer issue visas to foreign students at Harvard (a move that has now been temporarily blocked by a judge), that’s the one that is the most existential. It forces us to ask: What—and who—are American universities actually for?

As the proud beneficiary of an international education (I earned my graduate degrees in the UK), I have no standing whatsoever to campaign against foreign students. Nor do I wish to. The primary purpose of any university should be truth-seeking, and truth-seeking knows no borders.

But I do think these numbers—and Harvard is hardly unique—point to a real problem: Elite American universities are reluctant to be seen as American, or to prioritize American interests, even as they happily accept American taxpayer dollars. Rather, they increasingly cast themselves as global universities, educating “global citizens.”

The story of my undergraduate alma mater’s unofficial motto, coined by Woodrow Wilson in 1896, is illustrative. “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” has always been much more than a slogan. The school’s Nassau Hall served as the nation’s capitol for four months and eight days in 1783. Nine Princeton alumni served on the Constitutional Convention in 1787. And there has not been a year without a Princeton alumnus in the U.S. House of Representatives since its first meeting in 1789.

But not content to serve just our nation in a globalized world, the university revised Wilson’s motto in 1996 by adding “and in the Service of All Nations.” And then, in the wake of controversy surrounding Wilson and inspired by a speech delivered by alumna Sonia Sotomayor, it was changed again in 2016 to read “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.” As one alumnus said at the time in the official university press release, “It captures the latest narrative of world affairs. We are not just nations separated by borders. . . we may even be nationless. . . service to humanity is apt.”

Nonetheless, Princeton is actually an outlier among elite institutions for even suggesting in its mission statement that the “nation” should be a priority. Stanford, founded “to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization,” purports to prepare students “for leadership and engaged citizenship in the world.” Yale, which “educates aspiring leaders worldwide,” “is committed to improving the world today and for future generations.” Johns Hopkins puts it succinctly: “Knowledge for the world.”

This rhetoric persists even at small liberal arts colleges. With the exception of Carleton and the three military academies, not one of the liberal arts colleges ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report (three are tied for #8) mentions the nation. In the words of Amherst, “Let them give light to the world.”

Who wouldn’t be in favor of serving humanity and the world? But shouldn’t the first aim be to fix the dysfunction here at home?

Then again, these are the same universities that have sown so much of that dysfunction in the first place, from the class war to the culture war to, most recently and chillingly, the global intifada. For years they have cultivated an elite that is, on the one hand, unified in its disdain for the working class and all who do not buy its ever-evolving set of luxury beliefs and, on the other, divided by those same beliefs, perpetually sorting itself into so-called affinity groups based on perceived oppressor/oppressed status. The last identity with which the members of this elite wish to identify is “American,” because as Americans we must all—rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican—be categorized together as the most privileged and least oppressed people in the world.

Besides, educating “global citizens” is a whole lot easier than educating American citizens—because what does global citizenship mean? There is no particular knowledge that global citizens must possess, no legal obligations that they must fulfill, no decisions or compromises that they must, as a diverse and opinionated electorate, work through together. Global citizenship sounds important but generally amounts to kumbaya; American citizenship consists of real choices and sacrifices, alongside its many blessings.

As they pursue their global missions, American universities are failing to form an educated American citizenry. We will soon celebrate America’s 250th birthday, with great fanfare promised by President Trump, and yet most Americans will not know what they are actually celebrating. Why did the colonists fight the British? What were the original 13 states? When was the Constitution ratified? These are questions that most Americans (76 percent, 72 percent, and 87 percent, respectively) cannot answer, even in a multiple-choice format, according to a 2018 survey that found that only one in three Americans would be able to pass the U.S. Citizenship test.

The situation is hardly less dire if we focus strictly on the college-educated. A survey conducted last year by College Pulse and my colleagues at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that most college students think the Constitution was written in 1776. Only 32 percent answered correctly that it was written in 1787—and only 31 percent that it was written by James Madison.

I do not believe that this is because the surveyed students are stupid. There were two civics questions (out of 28) they could overwhelmingly answer: Seventy-nine percent knew what the Electoral College is, and 83 percent could identify that Brown v. Board of Education ended racial segregation in public schools. I think we can fairly speculate that this is, on the one hand, because the Electoral College remains relevant and controversial in American life and, on the other, because one thing students do learn about is America’s troubled history with race.

Students learn the information that they are exposed to—and most college students are not exposed to information about America’s government or history. Out of the 1,137 institutions whose curricula ACTA tracks, 931 require a writing course and 938 require a science course, but only 210 require a course in U.S. history or government. So here is a relatively straightforward but important change that universities across the country can and should make to put America first: Require civics.

For inspiration they might look to Ohio, where next month, the recently signed Senate Bill 1 (The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act) will take effect, mandating, among other things, that every state institution of higher education require its bachelor’s students to pass a course in “the subject area of American civic literacy.” At a minimum, no student will graduate without demonstrating proficiency in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and (for the sake of understanding the free market) selections from the writings of Adam Smith.

It should not be controversial to say that every American—let alone every college-educated American—needs to read and discuss these texts. Our continued self-governance requires this baseline knowledge.

And it should not be controversial to say that every foreigner who studies in America needs to read them, too. For one thing, it would be a whole lot easier to justify the 27 percent if Harvard could legitimately claim to instill in its foreign students a respect for American laws and traditions. For another, this would in fact be a service to humanity—because it is precisely through enduring ideas like the ones contained in our foundational texts that America is best positioned to “give light to the world.”

This piece was originally published by The Free Press on May 26, 2025.