The 70th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) “Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World” was held 3/28/2026 – 4/1/2026 in San Francisco, highlighting pressing global and local concerns across regions experiencing division and conflict, including the U.S., with No Kings protests and rallies coinciding with conference dates. My own presentation critically examined evolving U.S. policy in international education and its impact on the world, aiming to contribute to ongoing dialogue on the global governance of education and invite critical reflections and innovative solutions. Titled “Executive Orders in U.S. Education: National Policy, Global Effects – the case of Illinois”, my presentation was aptly situated in a session titled “Rethinking Equity, Rethinking Power and Responsibility in Education: Policy, Governance, and the Struggle for Equity”, of which I was the chair. An overview of the talk follows.
In January 2025, shortly after inauguration day, the newly elected president of the United States issued a corpus of contentious executive orders that resulted in a wide array of negative consequences reverberating not only across the institutions of the U.S. government, but also non-governmental organizations, corporations, and civil society. The devastating effects of these presidential actions were especially pronounced in higher education in the U.S., with negative impacts on students, faculty, and institutions across the globe. Many of the new U.S. Executive Orders (EOs) impacted education within and outside U.S. borders through the approaches used to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives, combat Antisemitism, and address immigration and terrorism. These EOs compounded effects on higher education, limiting freedom of speech, legal recourse, and funding. Using Global Studies to explore these intersectional impacts on a multitude of stakeholders while acknowledging that the “danger of the single story” (Adichie, 2009) masks the nonlinearity of change and the inequitable distribution of effects, this presentation addressed how the effects of these presidential actions were not limited to the U.S., and negatively impacted global peace, social cohesion, and justice (CIES, 2025).
The Field of Global Studies:
Global Studies approaches employ the four pillars of Global Studies as outlined by Manfred Steger (2016) to bring a global perspective to the analysis. First, acknowledging globalization as a phenomenon allows the study of the effects of U.S. policy worldwide using the global as the unit of analysis. Further, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach helps highlight how U.S. policy is impacting all fields in higher education, but in different ways. Global Studies also notes the non-linearity of time and space, showing that global changes are happening at disparate rates of speed for different stakeholders at different times and that the changes do not follow a linear pattern as the events are not discrete. Finally, as the blitz of information from the U.S. serves to distract stakeholders while inducing change, Global Studies engages in critical analysis to fully understand not just the short-term impacts of these presidential actions, but the potential long-term effects as well.
Mode of Inquiry:
The NAFSA Association of International Educators reported that international education programs across the U.S. are threatened by drastic cuts to grant funding (2025). Together with recent orders that target international scholars and students, these actions weaken U.S. institutions and undermine their global competitiveness (2025). Current literature and reports on both grant funding focused on international education and enrollment of international students reveal the national impact of the EOs on U.S. colleges and universities. For example, Title VI, a part of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which dedicates funding to build foreign language and area studies programs at U.S. universities, was targeted for elimination. The goal of this program was to build a cadre of well-trained diplomats and international specialists of sufficient caliber to meet U.S. national security needs. With nearly 130 U.S. National Resource Centers (NRCs) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS)-granting institutions across the country (IFLE, 2025) facing defunding, U.S. institutions' ability to build capacity in world languages and global and area studies is threatened. Combined with NAFSA’s projection that international student enrollment may drop by 30-40 percent, the effects of the loss of federal funding will result in lost revenues and jobs within universities across the country, and the communities they support. Demonstrating the real-life impacts of these EOs on the ground, the University of Illinois lost funding for its 6 NRC and FLAS Centers in 2025, totaling $8 million in funding and 75 student fellowships lost.
Findings:
The ongoing influx of policy changes and the legal battles ensuing to mitigate the impacts of these presidential actions mean that while short-term impacts are measurable, long-term impacts are uncertain and in flux. The compounded effects of decreased financial funding and lowered international enrollment will have negative effects on U.S. institutions, as well as their faculty, students, and partners abroad. While concentrated efforts to highlight the value of preserving language and area studies training and maintaining an internationally diverse student body will resonate with some lawmakers, more advocacy and activism are needed to highlight the benefits of international education in strengthening the global skills of our workforce and bolstering U.S. national security. Continuously highlighting the challenges faced by our nation’s universities to mitigate the impact of these EOs on its students, faculty, and community stakeholders is a necessary action to influence policy development in an era of waning support for federally funded education programs.
