Survival before Norms? How Universities Decouple from Alliancing in Presidential Statements on International Student Support

• In Event: Institutions in Flux: Navigating Institutional Change and Political Tension in Higher Education

Abstract

This study examines how universities navigate conflicting pressures between political mandates and shared norms regarding international student support. Analyzing presidential statements in 2020 and 2025 from member universities of the Association of American Universities (AAU), we employed natural language processing techniques to measure semantic similarities and hedging languages. Findings reveal decoupling from a collective stance, with university statements aligning less with AAU pronouncements and diverging more from each other in 2025 compared to 2020. This shift was more notable in private universities, with their increased use of hedging language, suggesting a more cautious rhetorical stance. Public universities show a proportional decrease in hedging, despite their decoupling responses. These results indicate that university norms are fluid and susceptible to political pressure.

Authors

• YoungHoon Koh, The University of Arizona

• Seongjin Park, Speak