Troubled by a national security legislation that curbs the exercise of civil liberties in Hong Kong, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order last week with far-reaching effects. In one little noticed provision, the US president ordered that steps be taken to “terminate the Fulbright exchange programme with regard to China and Hong Kong”. It is difficult to comprehend the administration’s thinking on this move, which seems woefully misguided. Every year, the US State Department’s Fulbright Programme sends thousands of American scholars, artists, professionals and students to over 160 countries to study, teach, lecture and conduct research while bringing thousands of foreign nationals to the US to do the same. Since 1946, more than 390,000 individuals have participated in the programme. American colleges and universities have benefited greatly, as have many hundreds of institutions abroad. It is one of the more successful examples of US cultural diplomacy, having engendered fruitful cross-border collaborations, positive global sentiment, and friendly relationships between Americans and countless people around the world. The number of participants in the China and Hong Kong programmes is relatively modest. In 2017, the last year for which data has been published, fewer than 70 Americans and 130 non-Americans participated. But these are crucial opportunities that further the US and global interest in scientific and intellectual advancement and in meaningful cultural exchange. To be sure, the Trump administration is right about Beijing’s threat to Hong Kong, and this threat cannot be taken lightly. The Chinese regime is one that, as Amnesty International has documented , regularly imprisons political critics , tortures the detained and has engaged in massive repression of Uygurs , Kazakhs , and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang. In China, as confirmed in a recent report by the Global Public Policy Institute and the Scholars at Risk Network, academic freedom does not meaningfully exist. Of course, China is hardly alone as a human rights violator, and Trump has continued to fete the leadership of Saudi Arabia , Israel , Egypt , Brazil , India and other serial abusers of international norms. Moreover, while the Covid-19 pandemic has temporarily ground exchanges to a halt, the US maintains its Fulbright programmes with countries the administration sees as adversaries, from Canada (remember those US steel and aluminium tariffs on national security grounds?) to Nicaragua and Venezuela. It is thus difficult to see principle in the administration’s action. But presidential hypocrisy aside, terminating Fulbright exchanges does harm to American soft power. I can speak to this first-hand. In 2015-2016, I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Hong Kong. This was a year after the “umbrella” demonstrations that convulsed the city and at a time of serious concern about academic freedom in Hong Kong’s schools and universities. I learned a great deal from my colleagues about what it meant to teach and do research in a semi-autonomous enclave feeling increasingly suffocated by Chinese power. With my students – who hailed from Hong Kong, China and elsewhere in Asia, Europe and the Americas – I used US history to explore the tensions that often arise between state authorities and an empowered populace, drawing connections, for example, between mass demonstrations in the United States in the mid- to late 20th century and the street-level agitation in Hong Kong in the this century. For the US to be a rights beacon, it must set its sights higher While there under US government auspices, I was not in Hong Kong to uncritically celebrate the United States as an exceptional nation and an unequivocal force for good. Like most historians, I see the American past in more complicated terms. But by showing my foreign students how an American can teach US history not as a simple story of freedom’s triumph but as a complex narrative involving ideals, injustices struggles, and perseverance, I was able to demonstrate the importance of academic freedom as well as the confidence of the American system. While Hongkongers may have expected this sort of critical self-reflection, most mainland Chinese, who constituted a significant share of my students, probably did not. The implicit lesson was clear: if Washington was willing to send its citizens abroad to teach critically about their home, that must suggest something positive about the US. Such exchanges are needed now more than ever. The last thing Americans should want is a world believing that Trump’s racism , ignorance and mendacity are representative of most Americans. It is thus crucial that nations see otherwise. Terminating the Fulbright exchanges with China and Hong Kong to ostensibly punish Beijing would eliminate an important source of international relationship-building, mutual understanding and goodwill. As the State Department knows, Fulbrighters are among Washington’s most effective grass-roots ambassadors. The Trump administration should reverse its misguided order. Scott Laderman is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and was the Fulbright Visiting Professor of American Studies at the University of Hong Kong in 2015-2016. Among his recent books is Imperial Benevolence: US Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11, a collection of essays he co-edited with Tim Gruenewald of HKU that grew out of a Fulbright-sponsored workshop at the HKU in 2016