While students are consumed by their on-campus activities, people around the world are facing life-or-death situations. Some of these people are friends or family of the Syracuse University community. Yet the university and its students don’t do as much as they could to support these global citizens.

While SU is not a humanitarian institution, students can participate in various organizations that have international importance on campus. Individual students can pressure politicians to support more foreign assistance funding. 

For students looking to discuss and improve the American focus of foreign policy, The John Quincy Adams Society — an organization with a chapter at SU — stresses “Less War More Strategy” to foreign affairs. Such stances are important when considering American foreign policy such as a twenty-year war in Afghanistan.

Citizens have a major voice in political decisions that guide foreign assistance. It’s especially important that students get involved in lobbying their politicians to increase the foreign affairs budget, a major source for funding aid to nations in need. However, foreign assistance has faced major pushback in recent years.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump laid out the first budget plan of his presidency under “America First,” which included a nearly 30% cut to the Department of State. The Department of State is largely responsible for foreign aid. Comparably, the Defense Budget is substantially greater than foreign aid funding. Despite public sentiment against wars, funding defense through the military takes a historical precedent over humanitarian aid.

Foreign aid should be a major focus of U.S. foreign policy. Especially during the pandemic, when the global extreme poverty rate rose for the first time in over 20 years, it’s very important to support foreign aid. Without action soon, it will be increasingly difficult to reduce the global absolute poverty rate.

These investments in foreign communities have major benefits that imply real implications for the SU community. Development in other nations opens new markets for potential students, for when an economy grows, there is an opportunity to make private education more accessible. SU has the potential to attract students from a greater range of backgrounds, and students can reap the benefits of a diverse community — such as exposure to new perspectives from across the globe — while helping those in need by pushing for more foreign assistance.

Garnering support for those facing desperate situations outside the U.S. should be a focus of SU students’ advocacy. To build a more globally focused community, students should participate in groups dedicated to issues surrounding global poverty and foreign affairs at SU. Discussions and support for those in need must go beyond the borders of our university.

Harrison Vogt is a junior environment sustainability policy and communication and rhetorical studies dual major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at hevogt@syr.edu. He can be followed on Twitter at @VogtHarrison.

Published on September 1, 2021 at 11:44 pm