The NPR Politics Podcast - Campus Activists Fear Trump Administration Crackdown

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Much of the activism seen on college campuses last year in protest of Israel's war in Gaza is now under increased scrutiny as part of a policy that the Trump administration says is aimed at eliminating antisemitism, particularly on American campuses. The effort has led to the targeting of non-citizen students over their past pro-Palestinian activism, resulting in students losing visas and several high-profile arrests. These incidents have created a climate of uncertainty at many colleges and universities, leaving some students feeling increasingly silenced and fearful. This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, political reporter Elena Moore, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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pediatrician. Okay, Here's the show. Congratulations. Thank you, doctor. Yeah, that is amazing. I mean that last year of medical school is really, really hard. Yeah. Hey there. It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to talk about how the Trump administration's policies about college campus protests are causing some students to worry.

Before Trump took office, college campuses across the country saw protests related to Israel's war with Hamas and Gaza. With Trump now in office, the administration has labeled those protests as anti-Semitic and has made moves to deport non-citizen students who participated in those protests. Elena, you have talked to a number of students who were involved in those campus protests in general. What are they worried about now? Yeah, I talked to a dozen college and university students around the country. A few of them are not citizens, are here on visas, and then a lot of them are US citizens

that were protesting the war in Gaza last year and are organizers on campus. And really the overall kind of sentiment I got from a bunch of people is that there are a lot of folks that are scared on campus right now. There are people that just feel on edge because they're seeing the news reports of how the administration is taking action on this. And then there are international students who are genuinely worried about losing their visa and having to change their education plan. As we know, it's expensive to go to schools here. It's a big deal. And then there are international students who worry about their safety in this. Obviously, we know that in the last few weeks,

there have been some really high profile arrests at Columbia University. Graduate student and legal permanent resident Mahmood Khalil was detained by immigration authorities in Massachusetts at Tufts University. A PhD student, Rumeysa Osterk, was also arrested and detained. She had a visa. And so, you know, I talked to a student who has to go by Sam. She's on a visa, international student,

PhD student at Cornell. And, you know, she said she was really afraid more than anything for her physical safety. And it made her sad to not be able to give her full name because of her fear of her safety. But it was a hard thing for her to do. I have to add my name as if I was a criminal who has done something that needs a cover up.

It makes me mad because this is who I am. She told me every day when she wakes up and she picks out her clothes now, she thinks are these comfortable enough to be like arrested and detained in. Alina, well, what is the government's reasoning for clamping down on these students? Well, this all stems from an executive order

that the president signed shortly after coming back into office. And it orders the administration to quote, "'Use all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence. They're kind of drawing on the really dramatic events of last spring where we saw all around the country, college campuses really become mass sites of protest. I think the biggest example was Columbia University. Their encampment lasted a good amount of time and it resulted in arrests and suspensions.

And the environment was so tense that the school decided to go remote for the rest of the year. And a rabbi on campus came out and said that, you know, Jewish students shouldn't walk around campus. There were reports of anti-Semitic activity. And so, you know, there are examples where the administration may be drawing on some of this. We even saw congressional lawmakers last year go to Columbia University and talk to some Jewish students about how they were feeling. So I think that this order cites on some of these really highly publicized examples that happened and you know had real effects on people.

Yeah, I wonder has this climate changed how folks are thinking about campus activism from here on out? I think so. In some cases students did kind of reflect on that. I talked to a student who does pro-Palestinian activism work, and he is at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. And he said his group has actually advised international students not to lead demonstrations, not to be vocal. He said people have quit the group because they're worried.

And then for others, they say that this fear has kind of gone even past just pro-Palestinian organizing. I talked to a student at Johns Hopkins University. He's a U.S. citizen, a Jewish student on campus, and he asked not to give his name because he's worried about getting harassment online. But here's how he characterized how the larger student body is feeling right now. So many students are just terrified, not even protesting in support of Palestine, but protesting in support of anything.

You know, there's just a stigma since Trump has been in office against protesting entirely because it's seen as so dangerous. He told me it's been incredibly, in his words, heartbreaking to see anti-Semitism, that would be, in his opinion, heartbreaking to see antisemitism, that word be, in his opinion, weaponized to enact what he considers repression and cause this chilling effect on campus. I think it's really notable that you're talking there to someone who said that they're a Jewish

student because there clearly were cases of antisemitism on college campuses that happened as a result of, you know, some of these protests. And I think it's, there was an important op-ed piece that was written by Jonathan Greenblatt, who's the head of the Anti-Defamation League. He called what had happened since October 7th, a quote, catastrophe for Jewish students on campus. But he said that while we do not know all the facts, we do know that in every one of these cases due process is essential in talking about whether or not to strip students of visas, as we've seen with a lot of international students. You know, he said, but it hasn't even remotely been clear that that's been the standard. Indeed, it's not about the letter of the law, but the spirit of the country." And he said, there's a substantial difference between expressing controversial political

views and engaging in conduct that deprives others of their civil rights. This distinction must guide enforcement actions. And, you know, he noted that we should hold people accountable for actual crimes, not Orwellian thought crimes. And as we navigate this challenging moment, we must resist false choices. But we know in politics, we get a lot of false choices, don't we? Yeah, I mean, and just to be clear, the Anti-Defamation League is a group that has been very, very critical of these campus protests. They've been tracking alleged acts of anti-Semitism, and they have supported some of the actions that the president has taken to combat in their words anti-Semitism. So this is a really

striking criticism of the president given the background of this organization. Yeah and Domenico you mentioned due process here. I mean is that what feels different about this? Because I mean there really isn't nothing new about American presidents getting mad at college kids protesting. But the way in which the Trump administration has set its sight on college campuses, it does feel a little different than what we've seen in decades past. College campuses have always been the incubator for, you know, protest movements and college campuses have always been places that have prided themselves

on being able to allow for the ability to express, you know, even controversial points of view, but then to have some education around that, to back it up, to be able to have these open forums of discussion. You know, in the 1960s and 70s, obviously you had the Vietnam War, and you had presidents very upset, obviously,

with what was going on on college campuses. We saw moments of violence in those times. A lot of that was local. I mean think of something like the Kent State massacre for example. But you didn't have the same level of from the top down saying ideologically we're gonna find certain people and we're gonna kick them out of the country based on the fact that they were expressing a point of view that the U.S. government didn't support. Yeah. Okay, well, let's take a quick break more in a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com.

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And we're back. So the actions of a few protesters seem like they're having potential long-term impacts on the campuses themselves, Elena, things like civil rights investigations and funding freezes. Can you talk more about how this is affecting some more like basic functions of universities? Yeah, I mean, the administration has threatened to pull funding from different schools over what they argue are civil rights violations. We've seen that most notably at Columbia University, which the administration threatened to pull $400 million of federal funding if they didn't agree to

certain terms. And it seems like the school is going to adhere to those but it's been something happening at a lot of different schools including you know at Cornell last week we saw the administration freeze a billion dollars in federal funds so this is like strikingly large amounts of money that these private universities do really rely on. It stems from this larger investigation that the administration is doing into a number of schools over what they consider are violations to the Civil Rights Act, you know, discriminating against Jewish students and they are,

you know, investigating all of these schools and that's kind of one of the byproducts of that. Yeah and Domenico, this, investigating all of these schools, and that's kind of one of the byproducts of that. Yeah, and Domenico, this also reminds me of how law firms have been reacting to pressure from the Trump administration. I wonder how you compare the two, like how both institutions are acting in this moment. You know, there are definitely parallels between what these law firms are, you know, doing or not doing, and college campuses,

because the president is using the funds from the federal government and the pressure that he could level against any of them to say, I will call you out. I will make your life miserable. I will make your life difficult if you don't work with us. I will withhold billions of dollars in funding in the cases of universities.

And you won't be able to have your labs. You won't be able to pay professors. And all of those things really have chilling effects. And a lot of universities aren't won't be able to have your labs, you won't be able to pay professors. And all of those things really have chilling effects and a lot of universities aren't sure what to do. And we've seen only a few presidents really of universities who've come out to say that they are against these things and that they're not going to cow to the pressure. I'm thinking of the president of Wesleyan, the president of Princeton, and not very many others to be frank.

Yeah. And Domenico, how is that line being drawn here between what is protected free speech and criminal behavior? There's a big difference, obviously, between the two things, and it's quite the fine line. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, when he was talking about the Columbia student, Mahmoud Khalil, who the US wound up detaining with the intention to deport. You know, Rubio essentially said that the US doesn't need a reason, that he doesn't need a reason to strip someone of their student visa, that he simply has the power. But you know, again, as Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League,

wrote in that op-ed, he said, it's not just about the letter of the law, but the spirit of the country and I think that that's where this is really running into the idea of yeah sure you can do this but is it American? Is it the way that the United States should be run? And on the other side of that you know the administration makes this argument that international student visas are really a privilege and not a right and that the government decides who gets these visas and who doesn't. Yeah and Alina for the students who have been caught up in this what kind of support are they getting from their campuses so far? I think it really

depends I mean all of these schools are in our new territory so to speak. I was talking to a student an organizer at Cornell named Yehune Stith. He talked about how he's felt disenchanted with his university for a while. He was an organizer protesting against the war last year. But this level of scrutiny from the administration and seeing the way that campuses around the country are kind of handling it, it's made him even more disenchanted.

And he's a citizen, but he's talked to international students who feel this way. And he remembered, he told me, he talked to this one student recently, and when he started telling her about how he's trying to get the school to, you know, agree to more protections, you know, trainings on how to deal with immigration officers, stuff like that, the students start to cry and was like,

I didn't think anybody cared about us. So I think that there's just a feeling, even if it's like, well, the universities themselves may not know how to respond because this is so new and so much money, I do think there's like a hurt among a lot of students of like, well, what about me? You know, how am I protected here? Yeah. And Domenico, it strikes me that even know, how am I protected here? Yeah. And Domenico, it strikes me that even if the administration were to reverse course on this, like maybe reinstate

some of that funding or at least, you know, ceasing to deport international students who took part in protests, there still could be some pretty significant long-term implications of chilling speech on campuses. Well, I mean, I think number one, you're going to have a lot of students who rethink whether or not they want to go to school in the United States, depending on which administration is in office, and that could potentially mean a

brain drain. I mean, we've seen that with some professors already who have either decided to leave or who were recruited and no longer gonna stay in the United States from other countries because, you countries because they're sometimes leaders in their fields, lead scientists, people who have made tremendous breakthroughs in science and other fields. And that's something that a lot of people are concerned about, that you could see students and professors who just decide, you know what,

it's not worth the risk to be deported or detained in the United States and they'll do it somewhere else. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Jomenica Muntanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

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