One of Niebuhr's key insights in Christian Realism, is that organizations or structures lack the ability to transcend themselves and so are incapable of repentence. Individuals may repent, but not corporations. Human structures (private businesses or governments) only change behavior when forced to do so. In part this is because the imperative of self-interest applies to organizations at least as much as to individuals. An office set up to monitor workplace safety will not declare the workplace safe and abolish itself: it will find new "threats" to justify funding and new hiring. Put another way, the individuals who make up that office will continue to justify their own pay and power and seek to expand both. This is why government programs never are abolished; the organization itself operates out of self-interest and is not suicidal. This principle also explains why the State Department always pushes for a diplomatic solution even when such a solution may be bad for our national interest. Diplomacy is what State does.

The recent episode of the disappering Egyptian "students" should cause us to ask if it is time to challenge higher education in the name of the common good. Schools and colleges will continue to act in self-interest; it is in their self-interest to have more students paying tuition, getting grants, etc. Foreign students help pay the bills and increase enrollment. We cannot expect institutions of higher education to transcend themselves, repent, and confess that they have wronged the country by pushing for more and more Middle Eastern students. We the people, through our government, must push to cut down on the numbers of students from predominently Islamic countries to a number we can keep good track of.