Tag: Protesters

  • Judge Rules Campaign Against Noncitizen Protesters Unlawful

    Judge Rules Campaign Against Noncitizen Protesters Unlawful

    In a scathing decision published Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that two federal agencies led a campaign to detain and deport international students and faculty for pro-Palestinian speech with the goal of chilling further protests, violating the First Amendment.

    “There was no ideological deportation policy,” wrote senior U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, in the 161-page ruling. “It was never the Secretaries’ [Marco Rubio, of the Department of State, and Kristi Noem, of the Department of Homeland Security] immediate intention to deport all pro-Palestinian non-citizens for that obvious First Amendment violation, that could have raised a major outcry. Rather, the intent of the Secretaries was more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.”

    He also stated unequivocally that noncitizens in the U.S. have the same First Amendment rights as citizens—despite the Trump administration’s argument to the contrary during the trial.

    The decision, which Young said may be the most important ever to fall within his district, comes about two months after the conclusion of a two-week trial in the case of American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, during which State Department and DHS employees explained that they had been tasked with identifying noncitizen pro-Palestinian activists to investigate and deport. Young wrote in his decision that the departments’ actions make it clear that they were working together to conduct targeted deportations with the goal of chilling speech—the repercussions of which are still being felt now.

    The plaintiffs, which include the AAUP, three of its chapters—at Rutgers University, Harvard University and New York University—and the Middle East Studies Association, celebrated the win in a remote press conference Tuesday afternoon.

    “That’s a really important victory and a really historic ruling that should have immediate implications for the Trump administration’s policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, the lead litigator on the case and a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “If the First Amendment means anything, it’s that the government cannot imprison you because it doesn’t like the speech that you have engaged in, and this decision is really welcome because it reaffirms that basic idea, which is foundational to our democracy.”

    Still, despite the victory, several of the plaintiffs emphasized just how worrying the federal government’s crusade against pro-Palestinian noncitizen students and faculty is. Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, said he believes those actions, as well as the federal government’s other attacks against academic freedom, are an even greater threat to higher education than McCarthyism was.

    “The only equivalents might be the Red Scare and McCarthyism, but this is even worse, right? Because it’s not only attacking individual speech, it’s also attacking institutional independence and speech, right?” he said. “The Trump administration’s attacks on higher ed are the greatest assault on this sector that we have ever seen in the history of this country.”

    So, What Comes Next?

    Young previously separated this case into two phases, one focused on the government’s liability and the other on relief for the plaintiffs. According to Krishnan, the judge will schedule a later hearing to determine that relief. The plaintiffs hope Young will forbid the government from continuing to target noncitizens based on their political views, making permanent an injunction that the judge granted in March.

    But Young noted in his ruling Tuesday that he is unsure what a remedy for the plaintiffs might look like in an era when the president consistently seems able to avoid recourse for unconstitutional acts.

    “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” he wrote, concluding the decision.

    “Is he correct?”

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  • Columbia Expels, Suspends Student Protesters

    Columbia Expels, Suspends Student Protesters

    Columbia University expelled and suspended multiple students for participating in allegedly disruptive protest activity in spring 2024 and earlier this year it announced on Tuesday.

    Officials made the decision on Monday, according to the university statement, saying the action is the “final set of findings” by the University Judicial Board (UJB) related to protests “from that period.”

    Sanctions passed down from Columbia relate to a pro-Palestinian protest encampment last spring and a May takeover of a room in the Butler Library, according to the university statement. Columbia responded to that incident by placing 71 students on interim suspension in May.

    “The sanctions issued on July 21 by the University Judicial Board were determined by a UJB panel of professors and administrators who worked diligently over the summer to offer an outcome for each individual based on the findings of their case and prior disciplinary outcomes,” Columbia officials wrote in an unsigned statement. “While the University does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”

    Officials added that “disruptions to academic activities” are a violation of university policies.

    Though Columbia did not specify how many students were disciplined, the pro-Palestinian student group CU Apartheid Divest alleged that as many as 80 were expelled or suspended. According to CU Apartheid Divest, disciplinary letters sent to suspended students require them to submit apologies in order to return to campus in one to three years.

    Student protesters accused officials of punishing students as a concession to the Trump administration, which froze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding due to alleged antisemitism at Columbia tied to pro-Palestinian protests.

    “The sanctions are believed to be part of a federal deal Columbia is about to announce,” the group wrote in a social media post.

    Earlier this year Columbia agreed to broad demands by the federal government, including overhauling disciplinary processes. However the $400 million in frozen federal funds have not yet been restored despite those concessions.

    Multiple media outlets have reported that Columbia is nearing a deal with the Trump administration to resolve complaints of antisemitism on campus. The Wall Street Journal reported that while a potential deal would likely restore federal research funds, it would also cost the university $200 million in a settlement fee.

    Columbia did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    University disciplinary efforts drew a tepid response from the House Education and Workforce Committee which issued a statement from Chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican.

    “Columbia has more progress to make before Jewish students can truly feel safe on its campus,” he said. “The Committee’s work has underscored the depth and breadth of antisemitism at Columbia that can’t be ignored. We will continue to investigate antisemitism at Columbia and other universities and develop legislative solutions to address this persistent problem.”

    While Columbia reportedly considers a deal with the Trump administration, Ivy League peer Harvard University has started a court battle to regain billions in federal research funding.

    It also sued the government for attempting to block it from enrolling international students. A federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from choking off Harvard’s international enrollment, and the same federal judge has not yet ruled on the legality of the government’s freezing of Harvard’s grants and contracts.

    However, the judge appeared skeptical of the government’s position at Monday’s hearing.

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  • U Michigan Used Undercover Agents to Surveil Protesters

    U Michigan Used Undercover Agents to Surveil Protesters

    The University of Michigan hired dozens of private investigators to go undercover on campus and surveil pro-Palestinian student protesters, The Guardian reported Friday. 

    Some of the investigators, who work for a Detroit-based security firm, were caught on camera trailing, recording and harassing students; one reportedly drove a car at one student, who had to jump out of the way.

    “It’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” one student who’d been followed by agents told The Guardian. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”

    The agents have been gathering evidence against students for some time at the behest of the university; Michigan state prosecutors used evidence from their investigations to charge and jail student protesters in May 2024, according to The Guardian. The state attorney general dropped those charges two weeks ago. In April, police raided the homes of five pro-Palestinian student activists in Ann Arbor for alleged “acts of vandalism.”

    A spokesperson for the university did not deny hiring the investigators in responses to The Guardian’s questions and defended “security measures” as essential to “maintaining a safe and secure campus environment.”

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  • Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested at Columbia, UW, Beyond

    Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested at Columbia, UW, Beyond

    About 80 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at Columbia University Wednesday as they occupied a reading room in the campus’s library, The New York Times and other sources reported.

    The arrests come just over a year after protesters at Columbia occupied Hamilton Hall, an academic building, as part of a massive protest movement that inspired other student demonstrations nationwide but drew ire from Republicans and pro-Israel groups, who argued that the protesters’ chants and signs were antisemitic.

    Columbia isn’t the only campus where protesters are seeking to revitalize the movement as the spring semester winds down. Though their numbers are nowhere near the hundreds that erupted last spring, pro-Palestinian protests have sprung up on several campuses in recent weeks—in some cases honoring the anniversary of last year’s demonstrations or calling for charges against student demonstrators to be dropped.

    “In light of all of the repression that the student movement for Palestine faced in the wake of the encampment last year, it’s important for us to insist on our demands, which have not changed,” a spokesperson for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine told The News & Observer regarding a daylong demonstration held at the end of April.

    Ultimately, it seems that most protesters are asking for the same thing they demanded a year ago: for their institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Only an extremely small number of colleges has done so, but that hasn’t deterred students from trying.

    The protests also come amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on institutions that he believes failed to protect Jewish students during last year’s demonstrations. So far, his administration has frozen billions in federal funding to Columbia and other institutions, and taken steps to deport international students who participated in the protests.

    UW and Columbia

    Columbia students weren’t alone in taking over a campus building in recent weeks. About 75 protesters at the University of Washington occupied a new engineering building, barricading the doors and starting fires in nearby dumpsters Monday night, The Seattle Times reported. The organizers, part of a group called Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return UW, told the paper they wanted to “repurpose a building that is meant to make weapons of war to a place that serves the needs of students and workers and staff at the University of Washington.”

    Three law enforcement agencies were called in to disband the protest; 31 people were arrested.

    Administrators at both Columbia and UW have issued statements condemning the protests on their respective campuses. UW president Ana Mari Cauce called the demonstration “dangerous, violent and illegal building occupation and related vandalism.” She condemned statements by the group celebrating Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, saying the institution would “continue our actions to oppose antisemitism, racism and all forms of biases.”

    In a lengthy message to the Columbia campus, Claire Shipman, the recently installed acting president, called the Wednesday protest “utterly unacceptable.”

    “Let me be clear: Columbia unequivocally rejects antisemitism and all other forms of harassment and discrimination. And we certainly reject a group of students—and we don’t yet know whether there were outsiders involved—closing down a library in the middle of the week before finals and forcing 900 students out of their study spaces, many leaving belongings behind. Our commitment to a safe, inclusive, and respectful campus community is unshakeable, and we will continue to act decisively to uphold these values,” she wrote.

    Both presidents said they attempted to resolve the situation peacefully before sending in police.

    Shipman’s statement earned her the praise from members of the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, who said in a statement that they are “confident that Columbia will take the appropriate disciplinary actions for those involved in this act.”

    At the same time, the same task force announced it would launch a review of the protest at UW.

    “The Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism appreciates the university’s strong statement condemning last night’s violence and applauds the quick action by law enforcement officers to remove violent criminals from the university campus,” the task force said in a press release. “While these are good first steps, the university must do more to deter future violence and guarantee that Jewish students have a safe and productive learning environment. The Task Force expects the institution to follow up with enforcement actions and policy changes that are clearly necessary to prevent these uprisings moving forward.”

    Arrests Elsewhere

    In recent weeks, pro-Palestinian protesters have also been arrested at Swarthmore College, Rutgers University, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

    At Swarthmore, protesters erected an encampment on Trotter Lawn, a central campus green, on April 30, demanding divestment and the protection of students from the Trump administration. The university began issuing interim suspensions the next day. On May 3, police were called in to tear down the encampment, according to a statement by college president Val Smith. Police arrested nine individuals, including one current and one former student.

    The Rutgers protest, held on April 29, was arranged to oppose an appearance by U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, an Israel supporter who participated in a roundtable on antisemitism at the university’s Hillel. Though they were protesting in a designated area near the Hillel, four individuals—three of them Rutgers students—were charged with rioting after they stepped out of the area, blocking a public sidewalk, according to MyCentralJersey.com.

    At VCU, one person was arrested April 29 during a gathering to commemorate a clash between protesters and police on campus the previous year. A student organizer with the campus’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter said the event was not a protest. However, university police said it violated a policy that requires authorization for events where students hold signs or banners, The Progress-Index reported. Police asked the students to disperse and arrested one individual who held up a sign chastising police for pepper-spraying protesters last April.

    At UCLA, three individuals were arrested at an on-campus showing of The Encampments, a documentary on the pro-Palestinian encampments of spring 2024. According to the university, the event, which drew about 150 guests, was unauthorized because it was hosted by the campus’s SJP chapter, which was suspended in February. The university indicated that the three individuals were arrested for assaulting a police officer and assaulting and robbing a student.

    ‘Scared to Talk About It’

    Despite the recent increase in protests, the Trump administration’s actions—as well as the penalties levied on student protesters by many institutions over the past year—seem to have quieted some planned demonstrations this spring.

    Emory University was home to an explosive clash between protesters and police on April 25, 2024, which led to 28 arrests. But this year, according to The Emory Wheel, Emory’s student newspaper, only about 50 people showed up to an event commemorating that day.

    One faculty demonstrator told the Wheel that many students no longer felt comfortable protesting.

    “It’s clear that there’s just a lot of people who are afraid,” he said. “You don’t have to actually arrest people sometimes to suppress freedom of speech.”

    Student protesters at the University of Texas at Austin, the site of over 130 arrests in April 2024, expressed a similar sentiment during a protest marking the anniversary of those arrests. About 100 people showed up, according to the university’s student paper.

    “You don’t hear near as many people talking about the genocide that’s going on, even here at UT,” a student told The Daily Texan. “With the 100-plus arrests that [law enforcement] made, people are almost scared to talk about it or to do anything about it.”

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  • Barnard protesters arrested after refusing to evacuate library

    Barnard protesters arrested after refusing to evacuate library

    Student protesters at Barnard College were arrested Wednesday afternoon for refusing to leave the campus’s library when asked by police, who were clearing the building due to a bomb threat, The New York Times reported. The students were protesting the recent expulsions of three student demonstrators.

    Protesters gathered for a sit-in in the Milstein Center at around 1 p.m. Wednesday. Several hours later, administrators shared that they had received a bomb threat, and police began evacuating the building. The New York Police Department posted on social media that “anyone who refuses to leave the location is subject to arrest.” (The bomb threat was later found to be false.)

    Many students initially refused to leave, continuing to chant above the sound of a fire alarm, until police began pushing students out of the building. Eventually, nine students were taken into custody for resisting police.

    Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian activist group, as well as the college’s student government, condemned Barnard’s leaders for calling on NYPD officers to remove students from the building.

    “Barnard College has broken a long-standing promise. SGA has been explicitly told by President [Laura] Rosenbury, in the presence of other senior staff, that the College would never invite the NYPD onto campus,” student government members wrote in an email to the Barnard community. “To go against this commitment blatantly violates a precedent that was meant to protect our students.”

    Rosenbury defended the decision to bring NYPD officers to campus, saying it was necessary to protect protesters from injury after they refused to follow staff members’ instructions to leave the Milstein Center. (Copies of both the SGA’s and Rosenbury’s emails were shared in an article by Bwog, an independent student newspaper at Columbia.)

    “For the safety of our entire community—including the safety of the masked disrupters—Barnard made the necessary decision to request NYPD assistance so they could evacuate the building to reduce the risk of harm … The decision to request NYPD assistance was guided and informed entirely by the absolute obligation we have to keep every member of our community safe,” Rosenbury said via email.

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  • Trump’s threat to deport anti-Israel protesters is an attack on free speech

    Trump’s threat to deport anti-Israel protesters is an attack on free speech

    This article originally appeared in MSNBC on Jan. 31, 2025.

    The campus controversies inflamed by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza have reached a worrying conclusion. Now, with President Donald Trump’s promise to deport those he deems “pro-jihadist” protesters, we’re facing questions not just about which ideas and speech should be allowed on campus, but whether foreign students should be deported for expressing disfavored views.

    On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order on antisemitism that directs leaders of agencies, including the secretary of homeland security, to familiarize universities with grounds for inadmissibility for foreign nationals “so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds.” Those reports will then lead “to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

    This development should worry all Americans, regardless of their position on the Israel-Hamas war.

    The order implies that universities should be monitoring and reporting students for scrutiny by immigration officials, including for speech that is protected by the First Amendment. It follows last week’s executive order threatening denial of entry to foreign nationals, or even deportation of those currently in the country, who “espouse hateful ideology.”

    Free Speech Dispatch

    Page

    The Free Speech Dispatch is a new regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression.


    Read More

    Student visa holders in the U.S. already risk deportation by engaging in criminal activity, and did so long before the enactment of this order. Students who commit crimes — including vandalism, threats or violence — must face consequences, including potential revocation of visas when appropriate.

    The First Amendment does not protect violence, for visitors and citizens alike, and an executive order narrowly confined to targeting illegal acts would not implicate First Amendment rights.

    But a fact sheet released by the White House alongside the executive order goes well beyond criminal grounds for removal of foreign nationals to instead threaten viewpoint-motivated deportations. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

    If that’s what the Trump White House expects agencies to read into its formal orders, this development should worry all Americans, regardless of their position on the Israel-Hamas war.

    Advocates of ideological deportation today should not be surprised to see it used against ideas they support in the future.

    Our nation’s campuses are intended to be places of learning and debate that facilitate a wide range of views, even ones that some consider hateful or offensive.

    This openness, albeit unpleasant or controversial at times, is a defining strength of American higher education. It’s one of the features attractive to students traveling from abroad who may hope to take part in the speech protections Americans have worked so hard to preserve. These are protections that they may very well be denied in their home countries.


    We won’t protect freedom on campus by making it inaccessible to the international students who study there. But, given the warning accompanying the order, international students will now be rightfully afraid that their words — not just their conduct — are under a microscope.

    There are already signs that critics of campus demonstrations expect the administration will expel protesters from the country. In the lead-up to the signing of this latest order, pro-Israel advocates claimed to be in contact with officials in the incoming Trump administration concerning lists of student protesters they hope to see deported. One group, Betar, told the New York Post it’s “using a combination of facial recognition software and ‘relationship database technology’” to identify protest attendees who are foreign nationals.

    Freedom of speech was never meant to be easy.

    At the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), where I work, we have seen firsthand the many speech-related controversies that have plagued higher education over the decades. In every case, adhering to viewpoint-neutral principles, rather than censorship, has been the proper solution. 

    If we open the door to expelling foreign students who peacefully express ideas out of step with the current administration about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should expect it to swing wider to encompass other viewpoints too. Today it may be alleged “Hamas sympathizers” facing threats of deportation for their political expression. Who could it be in four years? In eight?

    Advocates of ideological deportation today should not be surprised to see it used against ideas they support in the future.

    Why (most) calls for genocide are protected speech

    News

    Creating a “genocide” exception to free speech only opens the door to more speech restrictions and selective enforcement.


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    In Bridges v. Wixon, the Supreme Court’s 1945 decision rejecting the deportation of Australian immigrant Harry Bridges over alleged Communist Party connections, Justice William Douglas wrote, “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”

    Later decisions from the court complicate the question. The federal government retains significant authority over those who may enter and stay in the country. But the court’s reasoning in Wixon should provide lasting guidance.

    In his concurring opinion, Justice Frank Murphy stated that he “cannot agree that the framers of the Constitution meant to make such an empty mockery of human freedom” by allowing the government to deport an alien over speech for which it could not imprison him.

    Freedom of speech was never meant to be easy. But it allows us the space we need to work through thorny social and political challenges, even when it’s fraught with friction and discomfort. The United States should preserve this freedom on our campuses — spaces for free learning that set us apart from more authoritarian nations around the world — not make an “empty mockery” of it.

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  • Trump vows to revoke student visas of pro-Palestine protesters

    Trump vows to revoke student visas of pro-Palestine protesters

    A fact sheet on the order pledged to take “forceful and unprecedented steps” to “combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets” since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.  

    “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” the fact sheet said.  

    Its direct order to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers on college campuses” has sparked fear among international students who participated in the pro-Palestine protests that swept US college campuses last year.  

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the order a “dishonest, overbroad and unenforceable attack on both free speech and the humanity of Palestinians”.  

    “Free speech is a cornerstone of our Constitution that no president can wipe away with an executive order,” it said, adding that the protests had been “overwhelmingly peaceful”. 

    To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you

    Trump Administration

    The order pledges immediate action, “using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence”. 

    Its third section sets out specific measures to “combat campus antisemitism”, requiring agency leaders to recommend to the White House within 60 days all civil and criminal powers that can be used to combat antisemitism.  

    It requires attorney generals to submit a full analysis of court cases involving K-12 schools, colleges and universities and alleged civil rights violations associated with pro-Palestinian protests. If warranted, such reports could lead to the removal of “alien students and staff”.  

    While US institutions are required to report to immigration services any information deemed relevant to student visa determinations, federal efforts to impose an obligation to investigate and report on students are unprecedented and would raise serious legal questions, according to O’Melveny law practice.  

    The measures have alarmed many students and faculty on colleges campuses, but experts have said that the directive would likely draw legal challenges for violating free speech rights protected by the Constitution.  

    The American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a statement welcoming the Trump Administration’s commitment to “combatting antisemitism vigorously”. 

    Student visa holders “who have been found to provide material support or resources to designated terror organisations – as defined by the Supreme Court and distinguished from the exercise of free speech – are clearly in violation of the law and are therefore unworthy of the privilege of being in this country,” said AJC.

    However, many pro-Palestinian protesters denied supporting Hamas, saying that they were demonstrating against Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 47,000, according to health authorities.

    In a letter representing students from the University of California’s 10 campuses, students argued that the order inaccurately conflated “pro-Palestine advocacy with antisemitism” and set a “scary precedent of censorship for the student community”. 

    The threat of visas being revoked and students being removed was heightened after legislation was passed earlier this month allowing immigration officers to carry out raids in “sensitive locations” including churches, schools and college campuses that were formerly protected.

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  • Protesters Interrupt Israeli History Class at Columbia University With Anti-Zionist Fliers (Storyful News and Weather)

    Protesters Interrupt Israeli History Class at Columbia University With Anti-Zionist Fliers (Storyful News and Weather)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Protesters Interrupt Israeli History Class at Columbia University With Anti-Zionist Fliers (Storyful News and Weather)




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