it is simultaneously true that a) the United States benefits in any number of ways from student exchanges and that b) the actual structure of Chinese students in US universities is exploitative, unbalanced, and bad for universities' stability https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1254457598327193600

the rush to use Chinese students as a cash cow produced a) finances that become so dependent on them even before the pandemic political risk endangered US schools, b) a whole shady penumbra of stuff designed to game the admissions system ...

c) a political environment where the monitoring of Chinese students by the embassy and their classmates was effectively tolerated by schools while they suppressed their own academics' freedom of speech for fear of endangering profitable Chinese enterprises

d) teaching that was geared toward seeing Chinese students as a resource rather than the university as having a moral and educational responsibility toward them e) student communities that sometimes became *more* isolated and politically fervent than in China itself.

These are real issues, and shouldn't be allowed to be exploited or taken over by a jingoistic fool like Tom Cotton.