The Biden Administration and International Education: “Strong Steps in the Right Direction”

Following a challenging 4 years for international education in the United States and a contentious election season, many professionals in the field were relieved when Joe Biden was sworn in as president. In Biden's first few weeks in office, there has been a steady stream of executive orders and other actions from the White House. What do they mean for international education? And what else does NAFSA hope to see from the Biden administration and Congress?

To put the news in context, International Educator spoke with Jill Allen Murray, MPA, NAFSA’s deputy executive director of public policy, about her team’s to-do list for the new administration and signs of hope less than a month into Biden’s presidency. 

Listen to this interview on the February episode of the International Educator podcast.

To start off, could you give us a brief overview of what your role is at NAFSA and what your team does?

In the public policy department, we actually partner very closely with our regulatory practice colleagues. They’re responsible for the liaison work with the government officials in the administration, that specific liaison work. In the public policy department, an important piece of that is that we partner closely on the details of specific policy recommendations or policy challenges that we’re experiencing, but our work in the public policy department in and of itself is in four big buckets that I would call engagement with different communities.

And first and foremost is the obvious one: engagement with government relations