Degrees of Empire: Noncitizen Students and the Making of U.S. Higher Education

A sweeping history of how noncitizen students shaped U.S. universities

From colonial missionary schools to the globalized university of the twentieth century, U.S. higher education has long depended on students who were never meant to belong. Degrees of Empire tells the untold history of how noncitizen students—Indigenous youth, students from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and others positioned outside the boundaries of citizenship—have been central to the making of American universities a...