Many excellent posts today clarify the Fourth Plenum's push for technological self-reliance. This trend, as @BillKirbyHBS noted 25 years ago, is not an anomaly but a continuation. The engineering state, embodying industrial modernity, is central to modern Chinese history.

Thanks to @BillKirbyHBS and @jkyasuda for today's engaging discussion on Universities in the Age of Authoritarianism @JohnsHopkins @JHUArtsSciences @JHUEastAsianStudies✨

It was a pleasure speaking with @NPRDina about Qian Xuesen, the brilliant scientist who helped launch China’s missile and space programs. He might have stayed in the U.S. if McCarthy-era paranoia had not forced him out. Are we making the same mistake again?

"For history shows that universities can die, and nations will decay." Harvard’s fate is a test for all of American higher ed. @BillKirbyHBS traces how Berlin and Beijing lost their academic leadership—and warns the same could happen in the U.S. #Harvard https://t.co/cwiYzHGg5U

Nice to talk to @FMRNB in Australia yesterday on how great universities die, often taking the country with them. https://t.co/9A30qRMMMQ

Universities outlast regimes. Peking and Tsinghua survived imperial collapse, invasion, and even Mao Zedong. If you can survive Mao, you can survive anything. American universities will endure Trump-and whatever comes next, but the damage may not be small.

You do not stay a great power by attacking your greatest minds. If China treats universities like assets- and the U.S. treats them like enemies- we already know how this story ends.

Harvard will survive Trump. But the bigger question is whether America can survive without institutions like Harvard at their best- open, funded, and free.

We have seen this before. Germany dominated science—until fascism hollowed out its universities. Talent fled. Nobel Prizes declined. The U.S. became the new center of learning. Is America now beginning to repeat the German nightmare?

Trump says elite universities are corrupt, too diverse, too global. But the truth is America’s rise was possible because its universities opened their doors to the world- not in spite of it.

Meanwhile, Beijing is racing in the opposite direction. Since 1978, university enrollment in China grew from 800,000 to over 40 million. Tsinghua and Peking are among the world’s best research institutions. And Beijing calls education the “cornerstone of national rejuvenation.”

But now they are under attack. Trump has cut funding, targeted accreditation, threatened endowments, and vilified students and faculty—especially international ones. This is not sound policy.  It is sabotage.

@Harvard is not just a school- it is an engine of national influence as are dozens of other American universities. Together, they have powered innovation, diplomacy, and soft power for a century.

Can the U.S. remain a superpower while gutting its universities? Trump thinks it can. China knows it can’t. A thread on higher education, national power, and what is really at stake: https://t.co/s70TccWGDc

This is how universities die.  It can happen here, too. https://t.co/B6cq43sHC9. https://t.co/tcumidh2WX

Washington’s actions are both unspeakably cruel—coming just a week before our graduation ceremonies— and self-defeating. https://t.co/f79NcRsjdA

They are incubating their start-ups, spurring breakthroughs in AI research, and working in labs to find cures for cancers right here in America. Higher education is one of the few areas where America still leads- thanks in part to Harvard and the global talent it draws.

The Trump admin’s unlawful move to strip @Harvard’s SEVP certification does nothing but upend the lives of 6,800 hard-working international students—the best and brightest from around the world.  These young people are the scholars, scientists, and business leaders of the future.

The U.S. is experiencing budding conflict between the state and #universities. How can examples from around the world provide useful parallels and insights amid current tensions?⤵️ https://t.co/XCcnwYOYkd @Sven_Beckert @laurajakli @BoseSugata @BillKirbyHBS

Pleased to say that the paperback edition of my book, Empires of Ideas, is just out, and with a new preface on the state of higher education in the United States. https://t.co/f5MomEu3HP