With an Employee Facing Deportation, Wesleyan’s President Speaks Out

Among campus presidents, Wesleyan University’s Michael S. Roth is an uncommonly active blogger. He typically uses his corner of the university’s website to offer holiday tidings, celebrate sporting successes, and salute professors’ accomplishments.

But occasionally Mr. Roth adopts a sharper tone. On Friday he did so in a brief message. Its headline: “Stop the Deportation of Francisco Acosta!”

Mr. Acosta is a custodian at Wesleyan. In 2001 he fled Colombia and sought political asylum. His application was denied, and since then he has checked in annually with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, receiving work permits each year. When he checked in this year, the Hartford Courant reports, he was told he’d be deported on Monday, December 18.

By publicizing the case, and linking to a petition expressing support for Mr. Acosta, Mr. Roth was taking an unusual step. College leaders have worked behind the scenes to connect undocumented students and employees with legal aid, bolstered mental-health services, and declared their campuses to be sanctuaries, as Mr. Roth himself has done. But few have waded publicly into individual cases.

Then again, few presidents have spoken out against President Trump and his administration as consistently as Mr. Roth has. In the summer before Mr. Trump’s election, the Wesleyan leader called on higher-education officials to “stop the Trump calamity,” arguing that the candidate was “using the tools characteristic of demagogues and fascists to do the only thing that really matters to him: gaining power.”

Since Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Roth has continued to speak out. After declaring Wesleyan a sanctuary campus, he defended that statement on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News show that frequently attacks colleges for perceived liberal excesses. When Mr. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Mr. Roth upbraided the White House for “promoting an anti-scientific assault on public policy and research.”

The Chronicle spoke with Mr. Roth about his support of Mr. Acosta, and about his use of the presidential bully pulpit. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Why did you go public about the Francisco Acosta case?

A. In the past I have spoken out on issues I thought were relevant to higher education in general or to Wesleyan in particular. I’ve done so because I felt that, as a university president, I shouldn’t sit by while the core elements of our mission are attacked directly by politicians or allowed to erode because of political agendas in Washington or at the state level.

It seemed to me, from what I’ve heard, that the attempt to deport Francisco Acosta was very much at odds with the stated policy of the Trump administration to deport people who had a criminal record or in other ways had undermined the security of the people living in the United States by their illegal or undocumented presence here. I think that’s a terrible policy, personally. But institutionally, as a college president, I don’t make it my business to weigh in on every federal policy.

I was hoping that by calling further attention to this case, we might enlist supporters who can persuade immigration authorities that it’s in no one’s interest to deport Francisco. He’s a caregiver for his elderly mother, who is here with documentation. She is ill. There are humanitarian reasons for allowing him to stay. By drawing attention to the case we might be successful in helping his attorney at efforts at appeal.

Q. Under what circumstances should a university president jump into the political fray?

A. When the political fray directly has an impact on the educational mission of the institution — so as to keep the focus on education, and not on the political proclivities of the president or the dean.

I spoke out this summer because I thought the policies as described and the xenophobia and racism as enacted by the Trump campaign were so anathema to education — were so against the very core elements of our mission — preaching that to a choir of hatred and racism, it was our duty to speak out. I’ve had my differences with different politicians before, but it seemed to me in this case that Trump’s promises as a candidate were going to undermine the very basis of education as it has developed in colleges and universities across the United States.

I’m not alone in having that view. I’m one of the few people who have expressed it publicly. I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Q. How effective do you think higher-ed leaders have been in opposing the Trump agenda?

A. Well [laughs]. Not very. University leaders were very effective when it came to protecting endowments or stipends from taxes — or so it seems right now, anyway. But I think we can do a lot more in standing up for scientific research, for the values of social mobility through education. I’ve also called for affirmative action for conservatives on campuses. I don’t see my own stances as partisan in the traditional sense of that word. I do think standing up for education is something we should do with more gusto. I don’t think we as higher-education leaders have distinguished ourselves by a courageous taking of stands in the last couple of years.

Q. Tell me more about affirmative action for conservatives. What would that look like?

A. We have an endowment to bring teachers from different intellectual traditions, some of them religious, some of them libertarian, some of them the classic liberal, which we now call conservative views: free-market approaches to things. Because I do think there is a clear bias in the political beliefs of professors, especially in the humanities and interpretative social sciences, so I think we should do more to have intellectual diversity on campuses. As educators, we should champion that.

I think the free-market approach to free speech, which is popular among some free-speech purists, is wrongheaded. You’re not going to actually get a diversity of viewpoints just by saying everybody has a right to say what they want. You have to be proactive in attracting serious thinkers and scholars from these traditions, and bringing them to campus.

Q. How forceful have higher-education leaders been in the last two years in opposing certain elements of the Trump agenda that you find to be an attack on higher education?

A. Many people have spoken to their own constituencies. I think they’ve been most effective when they rally the troops around the financial issues. But where we can also be effective is standing up for values of free inquiry, free speech, but also inclusive communities, and rejection of racism, and a rejection of the use of harassment and intimidation to make our campuses less communities of learning.

In a time when higher education seems to be looked at with less sympathy than ever, I think finding a way to speak to large groups of people about why higher education is important should be part of a president’s job.

Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com. Brock Read is assistant managing editor for daily news at The Chronicle. He directs a team of editors and reporters who cover policy, research, labor, and academic trends, among other things. Follow him on Twitter @bhread, or drop him a line at brock.read@chronicle.com.