Tag: details

  • AAUP v. Rubio Reveals Details of Deportation Efforts

    AAUP v. Rubio Reveals Details of Deportation Efforts

    Today is the final day of the American Association of University Professors v. Rubio trial, in which the association, its chapters at Rutgers and Harvard Universities, and the Middle East Studies Association sued to stop the Trump administration from the “ideological deportation” of international students.

    The lawsuit argues that the deportations violate international students’ right to free expression and their Fifth Amendment right not to have laws enforced against them arbitrarily or discriminatorily. It also claims that the arrests of student protesters chilled speech on campuses—something witnesses corroborated.

    The trial, conducted during the last two weeks, revealed new details about the administration’s targeting of international students, including high profile cases like those of graduate students Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, who were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March. (Both have since been released.)

    Here are some of the key takeaways from the trial ahead of the parties’ closing statements.

    1. Dossiers about the targeted students included information about their protest activities.

    On Friday, John Armstrong, the most senior official at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, testified that the memos written by state department officials recommending deportation actions and visa revocations contained details about student and faculty members’ activism.

    The memos have been designated as for “attorneys’ eyes only”—the most restrictive possible designation for sensitive information in a trial, which prevents even the plaintiffs and defendants from viewing them. But attorneys and witnesses quoted excerpts of them during the trial.

    The action memo for Öztürk highlighted an op-ed she had co-written supporting a call for her institution, Tufts University, to divest from companies with ties to Israel, Armstrong said, according to trial transcripts published by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is representing the plaintiffs. But he insisted that the op-ed was not a “key factor” in the decision to revoke her visa and detain her.

    Another memo, regarding Columbia student activist Mohsen Mahdawi, specifically noted that “a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment,” according to an excerpt read by Alexandra Conlon, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

    2. Investigators weren’t given guidance about what constitutes antisemitism.

    The State Department hasn’t release any guidance as to what, exactly, should be considered antisemitism, Armstrong acknowledged on Friday. He also stated that, to his knowledge, the officials who have written action memos about protesters haven’t received any training about what constitutes antisemitism.

    That’s significant, because at least one memo, Mahdawi’s, referred specifically to “antisemitic conduct.”

    “I do know that there’s a common understanding in our culture, in our society of what antisemitism is,” Armstrong said.

    When U.S. District Judge William G. Young pushed him to describe that “common understanding,” he responded: “In my opinion, antisemitism is unjustified views, biases, or prejudices, or actions against Jewish people, or Israel, that are the result of hatred towards them.”

    3. ICE officials leaned on the Canary Mission website to find students and professors to target.

    For over a decade, the anonymously operated site Canary Mission has been publishing the identities of students and professors they deem antisemitic. Several of those listed on the website, including Khalil, Mahdawi and Öztürk, have been targeted since the Trump administration began taking aim at student protesters.

    On the third day of the trial, Peter Hatch, a senior ICE official, stated that “many of the names, even most of the names” on a list of noncitizen students presented to ICE’s “Tiger Team” for investigation came from the Canary Mission site.

    Hatch said that other names came from Betar USA, the American chapter of an international Zionist organization, which the Anti-Defamation League has labeled an extremist group.

    4. ICE agents said they prioritized the arrest of activists at the urging of their higher-ups.

    ICE agents who oversaw the arrests of Öztürk, Khalil, Mahdawi, and Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University professor, said last Tuesday that the cases were unusual not just because of the legal grounds on which the activists were detained but also because the orders came from high-ranking officials in the organization.

    Patrick Cunningham, an agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office in Boston, said that the agency’s leaders were “inquiring” about Öztürk’s case, leading his office to prioritize her arrest.

    “I can’t recall a time that it’s come top-down like this with a Visa revocation, um, under my purview anyway,” Cunningham said, according to the transcript. “And so with the superiors that were, you know, inquiring about this, it made it a priority, because we worked for them.”

    5. Students and faculty confirmed they stopped protesting out of fear.

    Over the trial’s first two days, five noncitizen faculty members took the stand to describe how news about activists being targeted had caused them to stop engaging in various political activities. They said they decided not to attend protests or sign statements related to Israel’s war in Gaza after hearing about Khalil’s and Öztürk’s arrests.

    One Brown University professor, Nadje Al-Ali, said she cancelled longstanding plans to travel to Beirut and Baghdad for research into women artists and gender-based violence in the Middle East.

    “Following the arrest and the detention and the threat of deportation of several students, graduate students, and also I think one post-doc—I mean, most prominently Mahmoud Khalil but others as well—I started to think that it is not a good idea,” she said. “I felt that it was too risky for me to do research in the Middle East, come back, and then my pro-Palestinian speech would be flagged. And as a green card holder and also as a prior director for the Center For Middle East Studies that had been under attack, and there are a lot of sort of false allegations about, I felt very vulnerable.”;

    The fear also extended beyond speech related to the Middle East; Al-Ali also refrained from attending a protest on No Kings Day, a massive day of demonstration that opposed President Donald Trump’s policies in his second presidency, including cutting federal government offices, defunding research and social services, and his mass deportation campaign.

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  • Report details uneven AI use among teachers, principals

    Report details uneven AI use among teachers, principals

    Key points:

    English/language arts and science teachers were almost twice as likely to say they use AI tools compared to math teachers or elementary teachers of all subjects, according to a February 2025 survey from the RAND Corporation that delves into uneven AI adoption in schools.

    “As AI tools and products for educational purposes become more prevalent, studies should track their use among educators. Researchers could identify the particular needs AI is addressing in schools and–potentially–guide the development of AI products that better meet those needs. In addition, data on educator use of AI could help policymakers and practitioners consider disparities in that use and implications for equitable, high-quality instruction across the United States,” note authors Julia H. KaufmanAshley WooJoshua EaganSabrina Lee, and Emma B. Kassan.

    One-quarter of ELA, math, and science teachers used AI tools for instructional planning or teaching in the 2023–2024 school year. Nearly 60 percent of surveyed principals also reported using AI tools for their work in 2023-2024.

    Among the one-quarter of teachers nationally who reported using AI tools, 64 percent said that they used them for instructional planning only, whether for their ELA, math, or science instruction; only 11 percent said that they introduced them to students but did not do instructional planning with them; and 25 percent said that they did both.

    Although one-quarter of teachers overall reported using AI tools, the report’s authors observed differences in AI use by subject taught and some school characteristics. For instance, close to 40 percent of ELA or science teachers said they use AI, compared to 20 percent of general elementary education or math teachers. Teachers and principals in higher-poverty schools were less likely to report using AI tools relative to those in lower-poverty schools.

    Eighteen percent of principals reported that their schools or districts provided guidance on the use of AI by staff, teachers, or students. Yet, principals in the highest-poverty schools were about half as likely as principals in the lowest-poverty schools to report that guidance was provided (13 percent and 25 percent, respectively).

    Principals cited a lack of professional development for using AI tools or products (72 percent), concerns about data privacy (70 percent) and uncertainty about how AI can be used for their jobs (70 percent) as factors having a major or minor influence on their AI use.

    The report also offers recommendations for education stakeholders:

    1. All districts and schools should craft intentional strategies to support teachers’ AI use in ways that will most improve the quality of instruction and student learning.

    2. AI developers and decision-makers should consider what useful AI applications have the greatest potential to improve teaching and learning and how to make those applications available in high-poverty contexts.

    3. Researchers should work hand-in-hand with AI developers to study use cases and develop a body of evidence on effective AI applications for school leadership, teaching, and learning.

    Laura Ascione
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  • OSHA Provides Details on Upcoming COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard – CUPA-HR

    OSHA Provides Details on Upcoming COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | September 14, 2021

    On September 9, President Biden released his COVID-19 Action Plan, which includes a six-pronged plan to combat COVID-19 through increased vaccinations, testing and other strategies. The plan will require employers with 100 or more employees to test nonvaccinated employees on a weekly basis. The White House also announced it will require vaccinations for those working for the federal government, federal contractors and establishments providing healthcare services that accept Medicare and Medicaid.

    The Biden administration is using different agencies to implement and enforce the different requirements. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will require employers with 100 or more employees to test nonvaccinated employees on a weekly basis through an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). While OSHA has yet to release many specifics about the timing and the content of the ETS, the agency did release some information late last week.

    General Timeline of the ETS

    In a call last week with stakeholders, OSHA said it plans to publish the ETS in the Federal Register in the next few weeks, at which time the ETS will become effective immediately in states where OSHA has direct jurisdiction. The 22 states with OSHA-approved State Occupational Safety and Health Plans must adopt the ETS or a standard at least as protective within 30 days of OSHA publishing the ETS in the Federal Register.

    Because the ETS will be effective immediately once published in the Federal Register, stakeholders will not have the opportunity to provide input on the standard prior to its implementation. Instead, stakeholders may comment on the ETS after it is published in the Federal Register. OSHA will use those comments to shape the subsequent final rule that will replace the ETS, which OSHA plans to issue six months after the initial release of the ETS.

    Content and Policies of the ETS

    OSHA also said on the call that it will be working with other federal agencies to ensure the language included in the ETS is consistent with the vaccination mandates imposed on federal contractors through President Biden’s Executive Order. Additionally, OSHA clarified that it will consider the employers’ workforce and not just a single worksite in evaluating employers that meet the 100-employee threshold for coverage. The ETS testing and vaccination requirements are also not likely to extend to remote employees who are physically isolated from coworkers or customers.

    Consistent with the COVID-19 Action Plan, the ETS will also require employers to provide employees with paid time off (PTO) or allow employees to use existing PTO to obtain vaccinations and recover from post-vaccination side effects.

    Finally, OSHA reviewed several issues where it does not currently have an answer, but it intends to address in the ETS. These questions include who pays for the required employee testing and what level of vaccination is required under the ETS (i.e. one shot, two shots or even a booster shot). In addition to these questions, information on the procedures of how employers will verify vaccinations, tests and procedures for handling employees who refuse to get vaccinated or undergo routine testing will likely be addressed in the ETS.

    CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for any information on the upcoming ETS and keep members apprised of any additional policies or requirements likely to be included as OSHA continues to work towards implementation.



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