Pact will help international students finish their studies amid Harvard’s legal battle with Trump administration
Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the United States.
The pact between the two schools reflects the tumultuous and “exceptional” politics of the postsecondary world during the second term of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Alistair Kitchen says he was detained and questioned about views on Israel and Palestine before being deported from LA to Melbourne
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An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.
Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.
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Continue reading...US president says it would jeopardize national security to allow university to keep hosting international students
Donald Trump signed a proclamation to restrict foreign student visas at Harvard University, the White House said on Wednesday.
The order would suspend for an initial six months the entry into the US of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard. Trump declared that it would jeopardize national security to allow Harvard to continue hosting foreign students.
Continue reading...Palestinian activist, freed just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crosses graduation stage to cheers
Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, released just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crossed the graduation stage on Monday to cheers from his fellow graduates.
The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He was detained and ordered to be deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.
Continue reading...University says it ‘strongly denounces’ commencement speech by Logan Rozos, who called out ‘atrocities’ in Gaza
New York University is withholding a student’s diploma after he condemned Israel’s deadly war on Gaza during his graduation ceremony speech.
On Wednesday, Logan Rozos, an undergraduate student speaker from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, delivered his commencement speech in which he said: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”
Continue reading...Ramona Sarsgaard, 18, given ticket for criminal trespassing after Wednesday’s actions against Israel’s war in Gaza
The daughter of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard was among those arrested at the latest Columbia University protests, marking the latest development in the anti-war demonstrations that also led to the temporary suspension of student journalists.
On Friday, the New York Post reported that 18-year-old Ramona Sarsgaard, a Columbia freshman, was arrested during Wednesday’s campus protests where students demonstrated against Israel’s deadly war in Gaza.
Continue reading...As universities begin to push back on Trump’s policies, those in Republican-led states face multiple threats
Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.
As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.
Continue reading...Lawyers say the Turkish national, who has been held in a Louisiana Ice center for two weeks, was illegally detained
A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a judge’s order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated.
A judicial panel of the New York-based US second circuit court of appeals ruled in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk after lawyers representing her and the US justice department presented arguments at a hearing on Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
Continue reading...Some students were also temporarily suspended as other colleges respond with disciplinary action to protests
On the morning of 3 May, the Swarthmore borough police department disbanded a four-day pro-Palestinian encampment on Swarthmore College’s campus and arrested nine activists.
The demonstration calling on the college to divest from the tech company Cisco due to its ties to the Israeli government was a rare uprising in an academic year where higher-education institutions have been quick to quash them. One current and one former Swarthmore College student were among those arrested, while the rest were from outside the college community, the college’s president, Valerie Smith, said in a statement.
Continue reading...President’s tensions with CBS show barely scratch surface of crusade against media he calls ‘enemy of the people’
Donald Trump’s battle with a US media he considers an “enemy of the people” has been a signature fight of his second term in office, sparking warnings of an erosion of press freedoms in America and fears over the independence of key publications owned by billionaires seeking to become close to the president.
But one struggle has now taken center stage that puts one of the most prestigious brands in US journalism in a direct legal fight with the White House, which has also dragged in a gigantic multibillion-dollar Wall Street deal by the corporate owners of one of America’s main broadcast networks.
Continue reading...DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership
The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.
The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.
Continue reading...DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership
The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.
The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.
Continue reading...Delegation visits jails where Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk are being held and denounce ‘authoritarian’ Trump
Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.
“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”
Continue reading...Rumeysa Ozturk was taken by immigration officials over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for op-ed
A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana to be brought to Vermont by 1 May for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.
US district judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.
Continue reading...Probably illegal move against US’s richest university is latest in Trump’s attack on independence of higher education
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education.
Trump on Tuesday called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.
Continue reading...Harvard faces funding freeze as Yale faculty asks leadership ‘to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands’
Barack Obama has come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.
Meanwhile, faculty at Yale University – another prominent Ivy League institution – has asked its leadership “to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and … self-governance”.
Continue reading...It may be a turning point in the White House’s attempt to gut allegedly liberal universities and punish law firms
It might come to be seen as the moment the “woke liberal empire” of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings struck back.
Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.
Continue reading...Education department says $2.3bn in funds to be frozen after university rejects slew of demands as political ploy
The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.
The announcement comes as the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Continue reading...Two students traveling on spring break were arrested and charged with assault in Copenhagen, police say
Two American college students traveling for spring break were arrested in Copenhagen, charged with assault, and held in a Danish prison for two weeks following an alleged dispute with an Uber driver, Danish police said.
The family of Owen Ray, a 19-year-old studying at Miami University in Ohio, said he and an unnamed friend have been forced to forfeit their passports and remain in the country.
Continue reading...Letter says Trump administration’s detention of Khan Suri ‘represents a fundamental violation of academic freedom’
More than 370 alumni of Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).
The letter, dated Sunday and shared with the Guardian, follows the Trump administration’s detention of Khan Suri – a citizen of India – on 17 March. He is being held at an immigration prison in Alvarado, Texas, where his next hearing is scheduled for 6 May.
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