Pardee School International Students Featured in BU Today
On October 13, 2020, BU Today published a story exploring the challenges Boston University’s (BU) international students are facing as they adapt to new learning arrangements, whatever and wherever they may be. Three students from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies – Joaquin Martinez Alban (Pardee ’23), Ahmad Azari (Pardee ’21), and Alexander Beatty (Pardee ’21) – were featured in the article, titled “Life for International Students? Fear. And Resilience.”
The article details international students’ struggles as they weighed how or weather they would return to BU this academic year. Due to the global pandemic and the Trump administration’s response to it, a number of students were left wondering if they could continue their studies and what their futures held.
Azari found himself in constant fear when President Donald Trump announced a policy to revoke student visas if the holders’ fall classes would be held online. The policy was later rescinded, and Azari elected to remain in Boston for the full year, fearing that he would be denied entry back into the United States if he returned home for the summer. “I don’t speak Farsi and I have been to Iran only twice in my lifetime,” Azari said of the country he could have suddenly been deported to if the policy had held. “You can imagine the fear I had.”
While Azari was calculating whether he might be able to come back to the U.S. after returning home, other students were faced with the hard decision of whether they could come back to BU at all. Alban, currently studying from his home in Quito, Ecuador, spoke of his friends who chose not to return to BU due to financial constants. While he’s been able to continue his studies through Learn from Anywhere (LfA), he wondered “how [much of a priority] is inclusion and diversity on campus, really, if international students are not even going to return to school?”
Looking forward, other international students are wondering whether they want to remain in the U.S. after graduation. Beatty, a graduate student from Dublin, said that he’s not to sure whether he wants to stay after witnessing the societal divides that have become apparent. “Studying international relations, I’ve done a lot of research and work on the United States,” he said. “And after just the last couple of months here, I’ve started to realize how screwy a place this is. The divisions in society—down to wearing a mask, even—just make you shake your head.”
For more stories from BU’s international students, read the full BU Today article.