The United States is once again proving that the only nation strong enough to undermine us is ourselves. The Trump administration’s recent attacks on foreign students have made our institutions of higher education far less attractive places to study and work.
If American university presidents do not forcefully denounce these unconstitutional and un-American actions, our universities will soon be shells of their former selves, like their counterparts in Russia, Hungary and other nations that have lapsed into authoritarian rule.
Tulane University — one of 60 universities specifically targeted by the Trump administration last month for alleged Civil Rights Act violations — ought to be among the first to draw a line in the sand and place itself on the right side of history.
America’s universities are by far the best of any nation, precisely because the best from other nations choose our universities over their own. Foreign-born scientists at American universities have won 90 Nobel Prizes and comprise 22% of faculty.
Stan Oklobdzija
Many of these eminent thinkers work in America because they came to study in America.
In the past several weeks, more than 1,500 of these students — including at least two from Tulane — have found themselves the subject of both summary revocation of their legal residency status or imprisonment in ICE facilities thousands of miles from their homes — many just a few hours away in Jena.
In some of these cases, video footage has emerged of plain-clothed ICE agents forcing these students into unmarked cars in scenes that would not be out of place in police states like Russia, Egypt or China. Though the Trump administration caved to legal pressure and moved to restore some of these visas on April 25, officials told The New York Times that visa revocations would continue in the future.
Andrew Leber
The official justification by several Trump administration figures is that some of these students’ legal statuses were revoked because they participated in protests against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. While some of these protests indeed turned violent, none of the students detained was accused of specific criminal behavior such as assault or property destruction. For those like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it was enough that these students were “a participant in those movements” to warrant their summary deportation.
The First Amendment does not just protect speech the government agrees with or speech by just one preferred group of people. Rather, the First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of political speech to everyone standing on American soil.
University administrators are slowly beginning to speak out. A recent letter signed by hundreds of college and university presidents — but not Tulane's — openly opposes "undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses." This response heeds Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous aphorism of life in the early days of Nazi rule: If you do not speak out, there will soon be no one left to speak out for you.
Universities like Tulane are respected institutions both in their own communities and throughout their expansive alumni networks. When we speak as one, we command attention and reaffirm our shared commitment to the moral foundations on which both democracy and academic inquiry are based.
More importantly, joining together now gives us strength in numbers. As Benjamin Franklin supposedly said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
We urge President Michael Fitts and others in the Tulane administration to unequivocally and publicly denounce the Trump administration’s summary revocations of students’ and scholars’ legal status. We further urge Tulane’s administration to join other universities in legal action to enjoin the government and its agents from arresting, detaining or deporting university students, staff and faculty for their political speech. Finally, we urge Tulane’s administration to publicly pledge not to divulge any personal information of students, staff or faculty to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or any other federal agencies for purposes of carrying out deportations.
Many other colleagues are currently at work helping noncitizen students navigate a hostile political landscape and an uncertain future. We encourage Tulane University to lead by example and show the nation what it truly means to act “Not for oneself, but for one's own.”