Students and professors in Chicago are worried that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, including the detention and possible deportation of a Columbia University anti-Israel activist, will have a chilling effect on academia.
“If this campaign of fear (from the Trump administration) were to work, I do wonder who’s going to be left to defend critical thinking in American academia,” Madalin, an international doctoral student at Northwestern University told The Chicago Tribune.
Local students and professors who spoke to the Tribune were dismayed after Columbia anti-Israel protest ringleader Mahmoud Khalil was arrested last weekend for his involvement in unrest on campus.
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Madalin said that the activist’s arrest showed how some universities had turned into “collaborators” with the Trump administration and feared her own progressive university could be next.
“We will say things like ‘at least it’s a liberal university; maybe they will manage not to give names to ICE,’” she said in the report. “But if it comes to that — if they are pressured — I wouldn’t be shocked if they did. I don’t believe in the benevolence of this institution.”
Genevieve Lakier, a University of Chicago law professor who also spoke to the Tribune, said she believed Trump’s executive actions were unconstitutional, but universities would likely feel pressured to crack down on student protests.
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“If you’re deporting people because you don’t like the protests that they engage in, that is classic viewpoint discrimination,” Lakier said.
“We have no idea where we’re headed, but it’s possible to imagine a world in which maybe very few students actually are deported, but there’s a lot of publicity around the few who are or whose visa status is challenged,” she added. “That instills fear in everybody else. I think it’s important to not only think about how many people are kicked out of the country, but the clear aim to affect what happens inside the country in an ongoing way.”
Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism on college campuses and has warned foreign students in the U.S. that are sympathetic to Hamas that they may be deported.
“We will find, apprehend and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again,” Trump posted to TruthSocial on Monday in an announcement of Khalil’s arrest. “If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests and you are not welcome here.”
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Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, was granted a student visa to enter the U.S. to attend Columbia in 2022. He has since obtained a green card and is married to an American citizen who is reportedly eight months pregnant.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” the Department of Homeland Security said of his arrest.
Federal Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Monday that Khalil not be deported while the court considers a legal challenge brought by his lawyers.
Free speech groups and other civil rights organizations have criticized Khalil’s detention as a violation of his First Amendment rights to freedom of expression, saying that the Trump administration is seeking to curb speech it disagrees with.
“This is America. We don’t throw people in detention centers because of their politics. Doing so betrays our national commitment to freedom of speech,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended Khalil’s arrest, saying the U.S. should not be granting visas to Hamas sympathizers.
“This is not about free speech,” Rubio told the media on Wednesday. “This is about people who do not have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card by the way.”
Fox News’ Landon Mion and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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