Responsibility to Whom? Leadership (in)Actions Amid Targeting of International and Immigrant University Students

• In Event: Politics and Policies of Threat: Detention, De-authorization, and Disappearance of Pk-20 Immigrant & International Students

Abstract

Federal moves to target university immigrant and international students (via travel bans, threats of deportations, and increasing scrutiny on student visas) and to tie these threats to cuts in federal funding for universities have accelerated since Trump took office in January, 2025. Executive orders and administrative measures have positioned international and immigrant students in higher education as pawns in leveraging pressures on universities to ban DEI practices and policies, cut funding and weaken academic freedom. While some executive orders have been challenged in court, the influence of anti-immigrant rhetoric on emboldening federal, state and local actions is undeniable. Therefore, the new administration has targeted black and brown immigrant, undocumented, and international students (particularly those from the Global South) at universities and colleges in the U.S, while creating the political conditions of democratic degeneration and authoritarianism.

This paper examines the responses/-ilities of higher education leaders charged with serving international and immigrant students in this context. We critically analyze the roles, discourse and (in)actions of higher education administrators charged with serving international and immigrant students. University leaders often perform neutrality in the face of international and immigrant students being cast as “illegal” or “threatening,” under the guise of institutional compliance. Administrators justify inaction or minimal efforts toward protecting, advocating for, and supporting their international and undocumented students, based on administrative limitations. This performative neutrality allows institutions to distance themselves from the consequences of their cooperation with immigration enforcement while continuing to benefit financially from the international student enrollment industry (Hegarty, 2014).

We examine higher education professionals’ interpretations and translation of these threats to international and immigrant students. Through this analysis, we map the ethics of responsibility in this context. Unlike “accountability,” “responsibility” implies a moral relation and response-ability (Stengel, 2023). Instead of reacting to coercion, regulations, external pressure, or the promise of rewards or punishments as the source of accountability, one doesn’t act responsibly, in the ethical sense “until one responds to the aporia, the absence of already known directives and consequences, in which an informed and consequential choice must be made” (Stengel, 2023, p. 48). Especially in the context of authoritarian politics, injustice, and the deterioration of common moral norms, responsibility and critical thinking (judgment) are central to navigating the uncertainties thus produced (Arendt, 2003). In such a threatening context, IHE leaders are called on to respond to the harmful conditions their students are navigating. We critically interrogate the response/-abilities of higher education leaders to advocate for these students. Professional preparation, ethics, policy understandings, interpretation of risks and leadership actions are analyzed to examine how higher education administrators, faculty, and staff interpret and enact responsible leadership, in the form of advocacy and/or resistance, in support of this student population. In doing so, we aim to illuminate what Castiello-Gutiérrez and Li (2020) argue is needed in higher education: pathways that truly protect international and undocumented students, not only by complying with government mandates, but by actively resisting policies originating in xenophobic ideologies and jeopardizing student safety.

Authors

• Samantha P. Scribner, Miami University (OH)

• Eunice Laryea, Miami University (OH)

• Abisola Aminat Adegunju, Miami University (OH)