A lot of people invested entire careers in researching, discussing and helping to wield US global power so they're inevitably going to struggle in a world where what they claimed was impossible might happen
Replies
I can imagine the applications from overseas to study at Yale or Harvard must be drying up right now. A bit hard to stay a world-leading university if the rest of the world is avoiding it like the plague.
aug 26, 2025, 6:32 am • 7 0 • view
It takes a while for the shine to come off that apple. I would expect that "police state in which masked goons target foreigners" is more of a repellent factor, alongside "shocking levels of violence for advanced industrial economy" and "barbarous healthcare system."
aug 26, 2025, 7:04 am • 4 0 • view
I would argue that’s the wrong way to think about this. Yale and H are the last to feel this particular bite (well, H got other Trump problems). It is the great mid-tier unis that’ll face steep drops first. that’ll lead the broad basis to crumble. Anyway, potatoes, potatoes - same outcome.
aug 26, 2025, 6:48 am • 17 0 • view
Yes, the top colleges where you would say “I have a diploma from college” will still have a good cost/benefit appeal. It’s the ones where you say “studied in America” which will suffer.
aug 26, 2025, 7:11 am • 2 0 • view
Maybe, but what we see from outside the country is ICE kidnapping students, and universities losing grants and control of curricula. And, although their biggest targets are law-abiding immigrants of color, ICE is including in its sweeps white people from countries like Germany and the UK
aug 26, 2025, 7:40 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah, I'm imagining some of these young brainboxes thinking, "Do I want to see the inside of an ICE gulag or do I want to start applying to Oxford/Melbourne/Sorbonne instead?
aug 26, 2025, 7:51 am • 1 0 • view
Anyone bright enough to go to Harvard or Yale has other options, so they won't get the cream of the crop anymore, which means that the US doesn't get those people staying on after graduation
aug 26, 2025, 7:40 am • 0 0 • view
Yes. The sunk cost of their education, their whole way of thinking.
aug 26, 2025, 10:17 am • 0 0 • view
The entire US political elite is a deer frozen in headlights of a truck driving straight at it. An average Bluesky shitposter has a better grasp of the gravity of the moment than these overpaid bozos.
aug 26, 2025, 6:29 am • 6 1 • view