Leadership in International Education: NYU’s Sherif Barsoum

I was lucky enough to have the chance (twice!) this year to interview Sherif Barsoum for my doctoral research. Barsoum is the Associate Vice President for Global Services at New York University (NYU), which has more international students, as well as more students studying abroad, than any other US college.

This blog hopes to offer just a glimpse into the incredible work going on at NYU regarding international education and exchange.

Barsoum has presented at NAFSA, AIEA, APAIE and other educational conferences and has been in the field for 27 years. He has been at NYU for almost seven years, where he and his team of 41 oversee the administration of all incoming international students (approximately 10,000 of them!), researchers and faculty as well as those outgoing to NYU’s campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, or any of their 13 study abroad sites in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America.

Barsoum’s office is responsible for all of the behind-the-scenes work that make a global education on the scale NYU offers it feasible. They handle visas, immigration issues, work authorizations and more recently of course, international COVID travel restrictions and vaccine regulations. Barsoum’s team operates to the goal of providing international students with “the maximum benefit under the law.”

“Sometimes immigration regulations are not caught up to innovation,” Barsoum explains. “Our students are so innovative, and are always coming up with projects, ideas, start-up companies, etc. Our job is to jump through immigration’s hoops to make things legal. Most international students can’t just start a company, or even do an unpaid internship, the way that US citizens can. So our ethos is, we’re not going to break the law – but we are going to bend it as much as possible to make sure that they get the best experience they can.” 

Barsoum states that he believes international education is a form of “soft diplomacy” that builds world peace and that, now more than ever, the field needs bold leadership. 

“Advocacy is very important in international education at this moment,” says Barsoum. The pandemic has impacted international students arguably more than any other group, but, Barsoum explains, the challenges they face are not new – only worsening. 

“The biggest problem we have is just immigration rules and regulations. For example, if an international student wants to pursue an internship or work placement upon graduation, they need ‘OPT’ – Optional Practical Training approval. They can only apply for OPT approval 90 days before graduation, but right now it’s taking at least 110 days to process. So, they have a month or so that they can’t work – not due to COVID, due to immigration being incompetent.”

The type of bold leadership that Barsoum espouses is somewhat of a signature style at NYU when it comes to global education and advocacy. When the Trump administration introduced a rule that would cause international students’ immigration status to be revoked if their courses were not entirely in-person, when most countries’ borders were closed, it was NYU that spearheaded a letter to the the White House signed by no less than 324 corporate leaders, including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter. NYU has since produced 18 more advocacy letters requesting clarity, guidance and action on international student issues throughout the pandemic. 

It’s clear to see that both Barsoum and NYU are putting their money where their mouth is: not only working steadily towards that goal of “the maximum benefit under the law,” but also taking meaningful action to change the law when necessary.

On this type of leadership, Barsoum says: “I think of the main tenets of leadership is service. You give of yourself and of your time, of your money and expertise, to serve other people and bring them up and support them. Because there’s a lot of people in the world that have so much potential, but nobody is giving them the time to come up.” 

I feel proud to be a member of such an institution and blessed to have gotten the chance to learn more about it from the inside out!