Category Archives: US universities

Daughter of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard arrested at Columbia University protests

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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.

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‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

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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.

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Court orders detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk returned to Vermont

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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

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Police disband pro-Palestinian camp at Swarthmore College and arrest nine activists

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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.

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Trump v 60 Minutes is a stunning battle for the soul of US media

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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.

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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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.

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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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.

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‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails

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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.”

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Detained Turkish student must be transferred from Louisiana for hearing, judge rules

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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.

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IRS reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status

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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.

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Obama backs Harvard as Yale faculty members support standing up to Trump

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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”.

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How Harvard’s pushback against Trump may embolden more US resistance

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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.

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Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands

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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.

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US college students detained in Denmark after alleged Uber driver dispute

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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.

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Georgetown alumni and students call for release of scholar detained by immigration authorities

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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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US House panel drops inquiry into Northwestern’s law school clinics

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Move comes after professors sued and alleged investigation violated their constitutional free speech rights

The US House education and workforce committee withdrew an investigation into Northwestern University’s law school clinics after professors there sued and alleged that the inquiry violated their constitutional free speech rights.

The professors secured what amounted to a legal victory for them on Thursday, when the House committee withdrew its investigative requests with respect to the university and its law school’s Bluhm Legal Clinic program on Thursday.

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‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors

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Advocates braced for revamp of certification system as experts warn of political pressure being brought to bear

Advocates for academic freedom are bracing for what they expect to be the next phase of the government’s effort to reshape higher education: an overhaul of the system accrediting institutions of higher learning.

Donald Trump has made no secret of such plans. During the campaign, he boasted that accreditation would be his “secret weapon” against colleges and universities the right has long viewed as too progressive.

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Protest planned after Florida student deported following traffic stop

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Politicians and student activists decry ‘outlandish’ deportation of Felipe Zapata Velázquez to Colombia

A campus protest is planned at the University of Florida on Wednesday in support of a Colombian student deported by the Trump administration following his arrest for alleged traffic violations.

The family of Felipe Zapata Velázquez, 27, said on Tuesday he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his home country after police arrested him in Gainesville on 28 March for offenses including having an expired tag and suspended driver’s license, then turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

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White House freezes funds for Cornell and Northwestern in latest crackdown

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Pauses come after Trump officials sent warning letters to 60 US universities for ‘failure to protect Jewish students’

In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.

The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.

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Trump reportedly threatening to freeze $510m in grants from Brown University

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University says it has not yet been notified, but school was among dozens warned of academic crackdown

The Trump administration is taking aim at Brown University with threats to freeze $510m in grants, widening its promise to withhold federal funding from schools it accuses of allowing antisemitism on campus, according to multiple media outlets including Reuters and the New York Times.

University officials said they had not yet been formally notified, but the school was among dozens warned last month that enforcement actions could be coming as the administration seeks to crack down on academic institutions .

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