“This is the first arrest for many,” President Trump said of the truth social networking of Colombian graduate arrest (as well as green card holders and pro-Palestinian campus leaders). “We will find that arrest and expel sympathizers of these terrorists-never return!” Perhaps even more ominous: “We expect every university in the United States to comply!”
Even if you choose to take Trump seriously instead of literally, it’s easy to worry about what all of this might lead to. The State Department is clearly using artificial intelligence to review social media positions for foreign students in search of visas that may be revoked. Ann Coulter suggested on Monday that compiling a list of deported students due to their position apparently violated the First Amendment. Scholar Samuel Moyn spent most of Trump criticizing those who overvented the president, calling it a “big and blatant step towards fascism.” My colleague Michelle Goldberg called it the biggest threat to freedom of speech since the Red Scare.
John Ganz wrote: “The state cannot make up for it as it develops. “If we do so, then we will no longer live under the rule of law; we live in the police state. ”
But the arrest was not only forward-looking, but also a climax, and history was further away than Trump's second inauguration. These protests have been in some form for nearly a year and a half, and many of the country's liberal institutions and organizations consider them suspicious and perhaps criminal.
It was both outrageous and not surprising when the Trump administration announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants had previously promised to Colombia, explicitly punishing schools for handling pro-Palestine demonstrations: elite schools in the country were under fire for handling such protests; several university presidents were forced to resign. The new government has reportedly prepared a list of five and nine schools.
But, for me, the strike against Colombia is especially incredible, as the university offers the most obvious punitive and visible public repression during last year’s campus protests. After the October 7 attack, the university suspended its student chapters of Jewish voices in Palestine and Jewish peace, and when the camp developed under the spring, Columbia invited the campus’ New York Police Department to break up business and arrest students.
This school year, even after the embattled Colombian President Minouche Shafik resigned in August, the crackdown continued. According to the Associated Press, a new office of the Activist Institutional Fair Discipline Committee, which includes dozens of students, has begun an investigation, including one who reported her major crimes being written in an opinion paper calling on the university to evacuate Israel. A professor claimed she was forced to retire and several Barnard students were fired for their activism.
Even if you believe these protests, prose and quadrilateral camps gradually disrupt campus life – I don't – can you really ask a university to do something to punish them? This question does not seem to be a response from the university, but rather that students are simply inclined to protest.
