Student-Visa War ‘Should Shock and Terrify’
An immigration lawyer says the Trump administration has trampled on free speech, but that “there’s still time to stand up.”
In this episode
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport student protesters. In recent weeks, the president has delivered on that pledge. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international students’ visas across the country, spreading fear on college campuses and inviting constitutional challenges from lawyers and activists. Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer, says the administration’s actions are unconstitutional. One of his clients, Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist, recently decided to leave the United States rather than face detention and deportation. What’s happening, Lee says, is a threat to the free speech rights of citizens and non-citizens alike.
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In this episode
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport student protesters. In recent weeks, the president has delivered on that pledge. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international students’ visas across the country, spreading fear on college campuses and inviting constitutional challenges from lawyers and activists. Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer, says the administration’s actions are unconstitutional. One of his clients, Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist, recently decided to leave the United States rather than face detention and deportation. What’s happening, Lee says, is a threat to the free speech rights of citizens and noncitizens alike.
Related Reading:
- Tracking Trump’s Actions on Student Visas
- Pro-Palestinian Activists Shut Down a Job Fair. One Student’s Punishment Could Get Him Deported.
- Trump has Revoked Student Visas at Dozens of Colleges. Here’s What That Means.
Guest:
- Eric Lee, immigration lawyer
Transcript
This transcript was produced using a speech-recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.
Jack Stripling This is College Matters from The Chronicle.
Eric Lee People are terrified. They are concerned that their entire academic careers and all the friends that they have made, all of the connections that they’ve made, all of the work that they’ve done to establish themselves is being erased.
Jack Stripling From the campaign trail to the Oval Office, President Donald Trump has been consistent on this point: He will aggressively go after pro-Palestinian student protesters and have them deported. Last spring, when he was a candidate in the presidential election, Trump told reporters, quote, “Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.” Doing so, he said, would put foreign students on notice that they had better quote “behave.’” In recent weeks, the country has seen President Trump’s plans come into sharp relief. The administration has now revoked hundreds of international student visas across the country. In so doing, the Trump administration has invited a host of Constitutional challenges as lawyers and activists argue that these deportations are predicated on protected speech in violation of the First Amendment. The Trump administration argues that it is within its rights to deport these students, citing a rarely used provision of a 1952 law which allows for the deportation of non-citizens whose presence presents “potentially serious, adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The crackdown began with the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian protester, whose case set the template for what was to come. Within days, the U.S. State Department revoked the student visa of Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student and Palestinian rights activist. The twist and turns of Taal’s case, which led to his recent decision to leave the country, highlight the complex and weighty legal issues now facing international college students and higher education writ large. To learn more about what’s unfolding, I spoke recently with Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer who represents Momodou Taal. Well Eric Lee, welcome to College Matters.
Eric Lee Thanks for having me.
Jack Stripling We’re in a very tense national moment and higher education is right in the thick of it. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international student visas across the country. How would you describe what’s happening?
Eric Lee This is an historically unprecedented concerted attack by the executive branch against the free speech rights of the entire population, citizen and non-citizen alike, with a specific focus at the suppression of opposition and academic freedom at the American university system.
Jack Stripling I’m curious, tell us a little bit about your role within this, Eric. I know you’ve represented at least one high profile student involved in this, but give me a little of your background.
Eric Lee Well, there’s a lot of attorneys and students and faculty who across the country are fighting to oppose this. I’m just one of them and have represented a number of the students whose visas have been revoked, either for pro-Palestinian speech or other reasons. But I’m an immigration lawyer and a litigator, so that’s my background. But part of this broader network of people stepping forward when the universities and law firms and the Democratic Party are standing back.
Jack Stripling What are you hearing from your clients? Describe to me the calls you’re getting, what are the most serious questions these cases are raising for them personally, and then we can talk about what it means for the country.
Eric Lee Well, people are terrified. They are concerned that their entire academic careers and all the friends that they have made, all of the connections that they’ve made, all of the work that they’re done to establish themselves is being erased. And that they may have to choose between risking long detention a thousand miles away from home under abysmal conditions, like the conditions that Mahmoud Khalil is suffering under in Louisiana or leaving the country and dropping their entire academic program starting from scratch in another country because the United States government doesn’t like what they say about Donald Trump or about the genocide in Gaza.
Jack Stripling Quite a choice you lay out here that’s very stark. What do you advise clients when they present that choice to you?
Eric Lee Well, as an American and as an attorney, it is very painful to have to tell people that they have reason to be fearful that something as innocuous as a tweet criticizing the president might require they go into a forced exile. Unfortunately, that’s the situation. I can’t advise everybody on a blanket level and wouldn’t claim to be doing so here, but people’s concerns are real, and that’s the purpose of these policies. From Trump, the intimidation and chilling effect is aimed at stopping speech that the government does not like. And unfortunately, it’s working.
Jack Stripling I want to talk about the speech component, but let’s talk about history a little bit. You described this as unprecedented. To your knowledge, has there ever been an effort so aggressive from the government taking actions like this against student visas?
Eric Lee Against student visas? No. I mean, there was the Palmer Raids in which thousands of anarchists, socialists, labor activists were rounded up by the Wilson administration and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. I think several hundred of those ended up being deported and the Palmer Raids were met with widespread opposition in the population. I think what’s new about, the important point to stress is both the element of continuity from the past, and there’s also the example, of course, of McCarthyism, which focused attention on the universities as well, but of also a break from the past. This is something different. There has never been an effort of this character to stop the population from hearing views which are critical of the president, of American government, of American culture and its institutions, whatever that may mean. Those are phrases from the second Trump executive order cracking down on free speech. Cause I think that there can be a tendency sometimes to treat American history as the government has always been violating everybody’s rights. And of course, there’s an element of truth to that. But that cannot be an excuse for treating what is happening now in a flippant way. This is new. This is unprecedented. It should shock and terrify people who want to fight this. And there’s still time. There’s still time to stand up and fight this, but it requires people who disagree standing up and doing something about it.
Jack Stripling Let’s zero in on how we got here, Eric. Very early in his presidency, Donald Trump signed two executive orders that led to these crackdowns. The first was Executive Order 14161, known as Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats. The second was Executive Order 14188, which is known as Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism. Your client, Mamadou Taal, filed a lawsuit in March challenging those orders. What were the legal arguments you made against the orders?
Eric Lee Well, since your question asked for the background, I think we have to take a step a little bit further back first and say two things. Number one, the attack on pro-Palestinian speech was conducted by the Biden administration and its Department of Education with a level of ruthlessness that facilitated and directly paved the way for these executive orders, number one. Number two, the war on terror — the so-called war on terror – which has been, you know, in existence for my entire life, my entire sentient life, I guess, was a bipartisan project. And the efforts to equate terrorist activity with free speech is something which has been unfolding since the war in Iraq and Afghanistan started in the early 2000s. Now that brings us to these executive orders, which are again, both continuity, but also a break because there’s never been an executive order or an act of government that says that it is unlawful to criticize the U.S. government. Even the Alien Sedition Act of 1798, which is viewed as anti-canon and hated by every thinking American since, only criminalized libelous, that is, false claims against the government as the term was understood at the time basically. This bars people from telling the truth. That I think is an important distinction. And so our arguments were that these executive orders were aimed at chilling speech, that they violated the First Amendment, that they violated the Fifth Amendment right to be free from the right to due process because the orders give no notice of what might be considered a criticism of American culture, for instance, or what might considered antisemitism. Because as we now know from court filings in Momodou Taal’s case and in other cases, attending a protest against the genocide is evidently prima facie, an act of antisemitism. Even though there were, as everybody knows, many, many Jewish students and professors participating in these protests alongside the non-citizens who have been targeted.
Jack Stripling Eric, you mentioned the chilling of speech and the sort of rules against criticizing the government, as you characterized it, I think. I should probably unpack this a little bit for listeners. So one of the executive orders I mentioned has specific language that says that aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States should not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for aid or support of designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security. Talk to me about that specific language and what you see as problematic with it.
Eric Lee Well, what does it mean to criticize American culture? Is pointing out the Roosevelt administration detained, without any due process whatsoever, 120,000 Japanese or Japanese Americans in concentration camps throughout the country during the Second World War? Is that criticizing American culture? What about Jim Crow? What about slavery? I mean, these are all questions which are bound up with Trump’s efforts to use the Department of Education to tell students what they can and can’t think, what teachers can and can’t teach. There’s also, I would say also, and it’s not quoted in the section that you read, but later in that same executive order, there’s talk about requiring that immigrants assimilate to be a part of a unified American cultural community. I mean, this stuff is straight out of Hitler’s playbook. I don’t think that that is hyperbolic in any way to say. I mean they are drawing from an extremely dangerous conception of American culture which should concern everybody.
Jack Stripling And let’s clarify something very basic here, Eric. Constitutional protections are afforded to anyone lawfully in the country. You don’t have to be a United States citizen to enjoy the protections of the First Amendment, correct?
Eric Lee Well you don’t actually have to — correct — but you don’t have to even be here lawfully.
Jack Stripling Sure.
Eric Lee The First Amendment applies to you because you’re a part of the people. And whatever the government argues about how many minutes or weeks you have to have been physically present in order to become a part the people, there is really no question that people who are the test that the Supreme Court has laid out asks whether you have substantial connections to the United States. And all of these students do. They were invited to this country to attend and to teach. They have friends and colleagues and personal relationships. They live here. All of these people are people to whom the Bill of Rights unquestionably applies. There’s a lot of right-wing propaganda out there coming from the White House that says that visas are privileges, not rights. All of that is fine and good, but once you’re in the United States, the Bill Of Rights applies to you. Think about what it would mean if that were not the case. Suddenly the president gets to decide under the Bill of Rights who qualifies as part of the people and who doesn’t. They’re talking about denaturalizing citizens for engaging in protest activity. They’re talking about stripping birthright citizenship. Anybody who thinks that this is just a question of protecting citizens from non-citizens has got another thing coming because their speech will be next on the chopping block.
Jack Stripling When I hear you speaking, Eric, I just hear your passion. And I don’t, this is the first time we’ve talked, so I don’t know what you’re like on a typical Tuesday, but you sound pretty riled up by all this.
Eric Lee Well, anybody who’s not riled up by it should really think about what they’re doing with their lives to be blunt. I mean, this is a situation where for all the criticisms that one can make about quote unquote American Democracy in the form that it’s existed at least in the last 20, 30, 40 years of degradation, this is a country which is about to mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the writing of one of the most remarkably progressive revolutionary documents in the history of humankind, the Declaration of Independence. And so we’re fighting for the principles that are in that document. And we’re doing so on the basis of recognizing that what it’s going to take is going to be an international fight. You can’t just save democracy in America with the population of this country only. It’s got to be part, and it’s a global struggle as well because the attack on immigrants and the attack of democracy is getting out of hand across Europe as well. So yeah, maybe that’s a bit of a rambling answer, but I would say anybody who’s not dedicating themselves to fighting what’s happening in this country is going to have some explaining to do when they’re older and talking about what their role was in this critical period to their children and grandchildren.
Jack Stripling We’ll be back in a minute.
BREAK
Jack Stripling Eric, let’s talk a little bit about Mamadou Taal, one of your clients. He is a citizen of both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Gambia. He was a graduate student at Cornell University, enrolled in the graduate program at the Africana Studies and Research Center. And he was lawfully in the United States on an F1 student visa. But he was involved in the campus protests that swept the country in spring 2024 and beyond. And on two occasions, he was suspended by the university in connection with those protests. Being suspended can affect a student visa status, correct?
Eric Lee Correct.
Jack Stripling: But that didn’t happen in Taal’s case. Can you talk about why?
Eric Lee Sure, and this relates to the broader issue of the SEVIS revocations, which is the internal system which the government and the universities use to track visa holders.
Jack Stripling And Eric, this is the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System. It’s a federal database that some colleges have been frantically consulting to help determine whether their students’ visas have been revoked.
Eric Lee Right. And so first of all, there’s nothing when you get a visa that says that you’re not allowed to participate in protests. There’s nothing, when you get a visa that says that you have limitations on what you can and can’t say beyond what the law says already. But Mr. Taal attended a protest at a hotel for five minutes in August, 2024. And the government said in filings that it made, sworn declarations from ICE and State Department officials, that that was what led to his being targeted for deportation.
Jack Stripling And just to clarify, this was a protest at a career fair, which actually took place in September, as I understand it. And the protesters, according to the university, effectively shut down the event. Correct?
Eric Lee Correct. There was no allegation of violence against Momodou Taal. The alternative resolution which he reached had no implications for his immigration status. And so the government is attempting to use the university’s disciplinary process in a way that has implications that should trigger a much higher degree of due process protections for those going through that system, if it is the case that those disciplinary actions are suddenly deportable, can become deportable offenses effectively, even without the commission of any crime.
Jack Stripling Now, Mamadou Taal filed a lawsuit challenging the executive orders we talked about before. According to court filings, the State Department says they revoked Taal’s visa the day before he filed the lawsuit challenging the executive orders, which in the minds of some might weaken the argument that he was targeted because of this lawsuit. I wonder if you can respond to that timeline that the government presents and how it affects your view of whether this was retaliation for his filing of the lawsuit.
Eric Lee Well, I’ll allow your listeners to draw their own conclusions, but what I will do is lay out the timeline of events. On Saturday, March 15th, we filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump personally and the leadership of DHS and the Department of Homeland Security itself. And we alleged that the two executive orders are unconstitutional. There were American citizen plaintiffs as well who have the right to listen to views espoused by Mr. Taal that are critical of the U.S. government. So everybody’s First Amendment rights are impacted by this. Very soon after we file the lawsuit, we get calls from people at Momodou’s residence saying that there is federal agents flashing their badges to people in the parking lot, that they’re clearly looking for Momodou. They had staked out his residence. They had put cars all over the place. It was a veritable enforcement operation. At this point, the government had not even begun to respond to the lawsuit, and we were asking for a court hearing to be able to make our arguments on the constitutional claims. When the government filed its first brief, it informed us and the court of a really interesting coincidence, which was that the day before we filed the lawsuit apparently there was a heroic effort of cross-agency collaboration on that Friday, the 14th of March, between the State Department, between ICE. Despite the fact that there’s a whole complicated series of internal regulations for when to revoke a visa, and keep in mind this was before all of the SEVIS revocations were taking place, the government claimed in its sworn declarations that all of this had happened the day before we filed the lawsuit, which triggered a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that says that no federal court has jurisdiction over constitutional claims brought by an immigrant about their being put into deportation proceedings. And so the government said that because it had done all of this, just coincidentally, six months after this protest took place at Cornell — you know, one Friday, the day before we filed a lawsuit, all the agencies decided to get together and revoke his visa and not tell him about it — that’s the government’s position.
Jack Stripling It sounds like you find that dubious.
Eric Lee Yes.
Jack Stripling A little background on Momodou Taal. He may have drawn attention publicly in part for his vocal public statements in the wake of the October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel. He tweeted at the time, quote, “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary.” End quote. And quote, “Glory to the resistance!” End quote. He has since said he abhors the killing of all civilians no matter where they are or who does it. From a free-speech perspective, though, is there any legitimate case, in your view, the government can make that celebrating the October 7th massacre warrants deportation?
Eric Lee Well, no, not as a strictly legal matter because of the Brandenburg case. In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a member of the KKK can go to a rally where people have got guns and he can say, you know, we’re going to go out and commit acts of violence and we’re going to march on Washington. The Supreme Court said that that was protected First Amendment speech activity. Momodou’s never said anything that comes anywhere close to that.
Jack Stripling Let’s talk about the rationale the government has employed in some of these cases. They’re citing in Taal’s case — correct me if I’m wrong, I’m trying to come up to speed here — the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. It allows, as I understand it, for the Secretary of State to deport non-citizens if the Secretary determines their presence in the country would result in, quote, “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” End quote. But I’ve also seen reports that a different authority of the act allows the visa to be revoked at the Secretary of State’s discretion. I’m a little confused here, Eric, I’m gonna admit. What level of evidence does the government need to revoke a student visa? Do they need any evidence at all?
Eric Lee Yeah, so the INA, which you mentioned, was passed in 1952. It was part of a whole package of internal security laws. This was the height of McCarthyism. Throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there were efforts by the government at various times to deny visas to prominent individuals, left-wing individuals, purely on the basis of their speech. The Congress in the late 1980s and finally in 1990 made changes to the INA to prohibit the State Department from denying visas based on speech. And so that’s the provision, the foreign policy grounds say that the government cannot deny a visa to an individual if based on activity or speech that would be protected by the First Amendment had it been engaged in the United States. But that provision also includes an exception for if the Secretary of State personally determines that the visa has to be revoked anyway. Now, the Secretary of State, no government official, has the discretion to violate the Constitution. These are individuals who are in the United States. They’re not people applying for admission from outside the United States. Their speech has all taken place in the United States, where it’s clearly protected by the Bill of Rights. And so, no, the Secretary of State lacks the discretion to deny visas and revoke visas and put people under removal proceedings, based on op-eds criticizing U.S. foreign policy, based on signing open letters, etc. But the executive branch knows that courts are extremely deferential to it on questions of foreign policy and the executive branch also knows, quite cynically, that in order for any immigrant to challenge the constitutionality of these determinations, they’re going to have to sit in jail cell like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk are doing right now for months and months and months before they finally get to a court of appeals to be able to bring their constitutional claims. But the main point is that, no, you can’t kick somebody out of this country for free speech activity. If you do that, the slope is so slippery that everybody’s First Amendment rights are going to be gone.
Jack Stripling Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently commented on this in a televised cabinet meeting in which he said that a student on a visa is not unlike a guest you invite into your house who messes it up and you ask them to leave. Let’s hear a little bit of that clip:
Marco Rubio If you come to this country as a student, we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree. If you’ve come here to like vandalize a library, take over a campus and do all kinds of crazy things, you know, we’re going to get rid of these people and we’re gonna continue to do it. So when we identify lunatics like these, we take away their student visa. No one’s entitled to a student visa. The press covers student visas like there’s some sort of birthright. No, a student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house. And so, you know, that’s what we’re doing with our country, thanks to the president.
Jack Stripling What do you make of Secretary Rubio’s characterization, Eric?
Eric Lee Rubio is totally incapable of addressing the fact that none of what he says matters from a legal standpoint, because once you’re in the United States, you have the First Amendment rights. The First Amendment applies to the people; it doesn’t apply to citizens. The president and the secretary of state do not have the authority to decide to whom rights apply. That is a fundamental revision of the democratic nature of the government that was established in the American Revolution. Rights are inherent in the people.
Jack Stripling Eric, I hear everything you’re saying. I’m sorry to interrupt you. I hear everything you are saying and I appreciate and respect it. I think as somebody who’s been covering what’s happening in higher education, both recent events and beyond, there’s a sense these arguments aren’t winning. Are you frustrated by that?
Eric Lee No, I think that they are winning in the population. This is not a population that likes what they’re seeing. This is not a population, even people who voted for Trump, did not vote for master’s degree students and PhD candidates to be grabbed by masked agents off the streets, thrown in the back of vans, and transported 1,000 miles away or to a torture chamber in another country like El Salvador.
Jack Stripling Taal’s case took a notable turn on March 21st. He got an email at 12:52 a.m., according to court filings, saying he should surrender to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody (ICE). To this point, was he even aware his visa had been revoked?
Eric Lee] No, he wasn’t. And he didn’t receive that email. Actually, we did. The lawyers did, which makes it all the more extraordinary. I am not aware of another instance in which Department of Justice lawyers have reached out in response to the filing of a lawsuit in an email that had the subject line of “Taal vs. Trump” and the case number from the Northern District of New York, saying that our client was being put into removal proceedings. They didn’t even share with us the Notice to Appear.
Jack Stripling This is essentially a signal that they are going to move forward with deportation proceedings, correct?
Eric Lee Correct, that’s the document, it’s basically the charging document. It’s where they tell you the grounds of removability. And here actually, I should clarify that the foreign policy ground was not among the specific charges that were levied against Momodou. And we don’t even know if a notice to appear actually even exists. We requested it, it was never provided to us.
Jack Stripling I’m sure this communication sends you and your team into a frenzy. Tell me what happens next.
Eric Lee Well, we brought it to the court’s attention, and we brought it to our client’s attention. And it was, for us and for the legal community, just another example of the totally off-the-rails, unlawful behavior by the president.
Jack Stripling And not long after this, on March 31st, Taal announced that he had decided to leave the United States rather than face what he presumed would be detention. And he voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit. Was this a distressing outcome in your view?
Eric Lee Our primary obligation is to protect our client and to advance his rights in the legal system. He made a decision that he didn’t feel that even if we had won in district court, that the Trump administration would abide by a court ruling. And so yes, it’s very concerning when scholars of Momodou’s character and level of intellectual curiosity and ability feel that they have to be sent into exile because they are worried that their speech will lead to their being sent to a detention center a thousand miles away or possibly at Guantanamo Bay or in Bukele’s El Salvador. That’s the reality that we live in right now.
Jack Stripling Let’s talk about the Rümeysa Öztürk case. Again, she is a doctoral student from Turkey at Tufts University. She’d previously written an op-ed criticizing the university’s response to what she termed the Palestinian genocide. Öztürk was apprehended by what appeared to be customs enforcement agents, which was captured on widely shared video. The government has accused her of being, quote, engaged in activities in support of Hamas. But we’re seeing that evidence come under some scrutiny now. We’re talking on Monday, April 14, and today The Washington Post reported on a State Department memo saying that the Trump administration had not produced evidence showing that she’s engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements in support of Hamas. I think some Americans are watching what’s unfolding, feeling like they’re witnessing a surreal or even Kafkaesque moment. What are the big questions that the Öztürk case specifically raises for you?
Eric Lee Can the government disappear you for criticizing it? Period.
Jack Stripling: Full stop?
Eric Lee: Yeah, I mean, that’s the issue.
Jack Stripling Do you think we’re going to get a satisfying answer to that question?
Eric Lee I think that the actions of the people of this country are going to be what makes there be a satisfying answer to that question. The attorney, she is very ably represented, they are making every argument that they possibly can in the legal system. But at this point, people need to realize we are far beyond the point of a Constitutional crisis. The Trump administration is trying to establish a dictatorship. They’re testing the waters with these type of Pinochet actions against individual noncitizens. They’re attempting to equate terrorism with protest activity as every dictatorship does. And of course, there’s absolutely no factual basis. It’s all lies. It’s lies that have been facilitated by the two parties for many, many decades, especially vis-a-vis students from the Middle East, North Africa, students of Muslim background. But the population’s going to have to stand up and stop this. That’s the only way.
Jack Stripling You know, we are a higher education podcast, but the fact that this is happening on college campuses, I think, is material to a broader discussion about the mission of university education in the United States of America. This is an environment that is meant to facilitate tough questions about tough issues. These executive orders that are specifically aimed at ensuring no foreign student bears hostile attitudes toward the U.S. government feels like it might be in tension with what universities are supposed to do. What do you think about that?
Eric Lee Absolutely right. And the second executive order on antisemitism in Section 3, I think Section 3E, says that the universities are going to be required to quote unquote monitor and report the in-class activity of faculty, staff, and students. In other words, they’re trying to transform the American university system into an arm of DHS and the repressive apparatus of the Trump administration’s deportation machine. I think one point that has to be said about the American university system and the response is that the level of collaborationism and cowardice and fecklessness on the part of the administrations at Columbia, Yale, Cornell, the University of California, Barnard, NYU, will be remembered for decades as the type of collaborationism that we now think of as Vichy France. There is absolutely no justification for it. And every single administrator and faculty who is afraid of losing their job, afraid of using their tenure, afraid of losing their nice cushy position because of this, you have responsibility for your actions. There are some examples of courage, very important examples of courage, which have to also be uplifted and noted. But to the vast majority of administrations and the substantial number of privileged people who are sitting quiet and sitting on their hands, there is absolutely no justification for such actions right now.
Jack Stripling Eric, you named a lot of institutions there that you accused of fecklessness. I don’t have time to go through each specific case. But I’m assuming that what you’re describing is institutions that in one way or another have either backed down in the face of threats from Trump or tried to cut deals and that sort of thing.
Eric Lee Right, and the same thing can be said about the law firms that are doing it. The institutions in this country are buckling under the weight of Trump’s iron heel. That’s why I think the main point that has to be stressed, and I say this, it is a legal issue. This is not just a political point, but that’s why the question of the mobilization of the population against this, people have to understand; the institutions of government and of the political establishment are not going to stand up and save democracy. That’s going to require, I mean, we’ll certainly continue to use the courts to the extent that we can to raise these democratic issues. But just to answer your question specifically, take a look at Cornell. Cornell’s disciplinary actions were cited against Momodou Taal in the government’s brief as though they justified the deportation. Cornell could have made a statement, they could have provided an affidavit, they could have come out with something public saying that it rejected Trump’s attempt to terrify speech on its campus. The administration was too afraid and didn’t help them. A few days later, Cornell lost a billion dollars in funding. There is no point in trying to appease Trump. That didn’t work with those who thought that they could rein in Hitler. It didn’t work with those that thought they could reign in Franco and Mussolini. And it’s not working today.
Jack Stripling I think people in college leadership feel like they are facing multiple existential threats. There are threats to speech, there are threats to their own students, and then there are threats to their funding, which are no joke. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the federal government being sacrificed means people losing their jobs, means programs being shut down. It’s not an insignificant threat in and of itself. How do you create a hierarchy of threat if you’re in college leadership about what’s the more problematic one?
Eric Lee Well, the question in the United States right now is, regardless of the concerns about funding, the question is whether or not these institutions, and really I’m speaking less about the administrators now and more about the faculty and staff and student body, because I’m not here to advise university administrators on how they can keep their endowments and get their funding from the Pentagon. But if the students at these schools, and if the faculty and staff at these schools want to ensure that they’re not going to have federal agents knocking at their classroom door based on what their students are writing in essays, then they need to take action.
Jack Stripling And take action often is in the form of protest, but I’m curious, as somebody who’s got your vantage point, how would you advise a student who’s here on a visa who’s considering participating in a protest? Is that a bad idea?
Eric Lee I mean that’s, that’s a tough question. And it is terrifying that that is a question that I can’t answer right now, because I do think in this moment, the government’s efforts to chill speech are succeeding, especially vis-a-vis student visa holders. And so I think that puts a lot of responsibility, even more responsibility on the shoulders of citizens in academic institutions and beyond, who have right now the right to stand up and say something. But one point I would make is if you compare people like Momodou Taal, who despite the fact that he knew that he was being watched by these right-wing Zionist groups like Betar, he still sued Donald Trump in his personal capacity. He stepped forward. And if he has the courage to do that, then some of these people who have tenure and are afraid to stand up and do something about it should learn from his example and grow a spine.
Jack Stripling Well, Eric, I appreciate you coming here and sharing your views, and I hope we can stay in touch as this unfolds. I know you’re doing a lot of work on it, and this is absolutely not over. Thank you so much for coming on our show.
Eric Lee Thank you.
Jack Stripling The Chronicle provided the U.S. State Department with detailed information about our interview with Eric Lee, including his assertions that President Trump’s executive orders violate the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution. In response to inquiry, a spokesperson for the Department wrote in an email, “Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we will not comment further.”
The Department did not answer direct questions about the circumstances under which student visas can be revoked. The spokesperson, however, wrote in part, “The Department of State will continue to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce zero tolerance for aliens in the United States who violate U.S. laws, threaten public safety, or in other situations where warranted.”
We also provided Cornell University an opportunity to respond to this episode. A spokesperson said via email, “We have nothing to share at this time.”
College Matters from the Chronicle is a production of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you like, drop us a note at collegeMatters@chronicle.com.
We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our Chronicle producer is Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Sarah Brown, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.
