April 14, 2025
The Ivy League is silently complicit in Trump’s war on international students.
As Donald Trump rapidly turns America into an autocracy, a striking class divide has emerged. A popular resistance movement is coalescing against Trump made up of ordinary people—even as those with the most wealth and power in society are the quickest to bend the knee to the aspiring despot. As the political scientist Jodi Dean noted in a recent editorial in The Nation, “The institutions of civil society, the organizations and practices that give democracy its substance, are crumbling. The word of the day is capitulation.”
Strikingly, the most abject submission has come from the commanding heights of society. Dean’s list of the acquiescent includes Columbia University (meekly caving in to Trump’s demand of a purge of pro-Palestinian students), the tony law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (which pledged $40 million in pro bono work after Trump threatened to take away their security clearance), and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (who has adopted a strategy of buckling to Trump’s demands, including on occasions when Democrats had the ability to filibuster, as in the budget crisis). Since Dean wrote, the pattern she described has gotten worse, with even more top-tier universities and big law firms bowing and scraping to Trump as if he were an absolute monarch.
Against this pattern of elite yielding, there’s plenty of evidence that ordinary people are ready to fight. Lawmakers of both parties—but especially Republicans—are terrified to go to town halls lest they be confronted by angry voters asking why they are allowing Donald Trump and Elon Musk to run roughshod over government programs. Earlier this month, massive “hands-off” protests surged through the streets of American cities.
The difference between the fighting spirit of ordinary Americans and the demoralized complicity of the elite is most visible in the field of education. When ICE agents go after students in elementary and high schools, they often meet a wall of opposition from staff and local residents.
Last Monday, The Guardian reported on one such case:
A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures, advocates, and protesters calling for their freedom.
Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the family after they were detained last month….
Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported:
Federal agents were denied entrance to two elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this week after they showed up unannounced and sought to get in touch with five students who the agents alleged had entered the country without documentation.
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Contrast the behavior of these schools with that of Harvard. On Friday, The New York Times reported on the maddening case of Kseniia Petrova, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who has been held in detention by immigration authorities for two months. A Russian citizen, Petrova works in the US on a visa. In February she went to France. Returning to the United States, she brought back, at the request of her supervisor, lab samples of frog embryos. Immigration officials at the airport felt she had not filled out the proper forms and moved to deport her. Because there is a genuine risk of harm if she is returned to Russia, due to her past actions protesting Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, she was detained rather than immediately deported. She is currently in a Louisiana detention center as her case is being reviewed.
The New York Times reports, “Harvard has made little comment about Ms. Petrova’s detention.” A spokesperson for Harvard told the newspaper the university “is closely following the rapidly shifting immigration policy landscape and the implications for its international scholars and students,” and is “engaged with Ms. Petrova’s attorney on this matter.”
When Petrova’s supervisor asked “colleagues to send letters of support for her to ICE, many of them confessed that they were afraid to put their names on paper—because they were in the country on temporary visas as well.”
The New York Times also reports that “Marina Sakharov-Liberman, the granddaughter of the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, has been following the case from her home in London. She said it was ‘extraordinary’ that Harvard had not more publicly protested Ms. Petrova’s detention and demanded her release.”
The Petrova case is not rare. While the most egregious assaults on civil liberties involve pro-Palestinian protesters such as former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who is a political prisoner, there are many more international students who are at risk of deportation for minor offenses, including speeding tickets.
As Sam Stein of The Bulwark writes:
The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international student visas in recent weeks, causing fear and havoc at universities and colleges across the country. One of the latest examples quietly took place this past week at the University of Georgia, where six non-U.S. citizen graduate students, all studying in the STEM disciplines, received notices that their visas were being revoked. According to a source familiar with the situation, more visa terminations are expected.
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Inside Higher Education, which is maintaining a database on these threatened deportations and visa revocations, has recorded nearly 1,000 such cases.
Trump’s war on international students poses an existential threat to American higher education. For centuries, immigrant scholars have enriched America. As Forbes notes, “Immigrants have been awarded 40%, or 45 of 112, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000.” In a world where scholars no longer felt the United States was a safe haven, many of these scholars might take their talent elsewhere. Politico reports that European countries are developing programs to poach scholars from America. It’s easy to imagine other parts of the world, like Canada, Latin America, and Asia, doing the same. Just as Trump’s tariff policy is leading to de-dollarization, his immigration policy is leading to de-scholarization: a willful dumbing down of society.
Trump’s immigration purge is also an affront to basic principles of free speech, which are at the core of the very mission of universities. Yet the administrators of top schools such as Columbia and Harvard have been notably silent on this issue. There are a few rare exceptions to this rule, notably Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber, a vocal defender of free speech. Moreover, academic organizations such as the American Association of University Professors have taken up the legal battles that university administrators are too cowardly to wage.
But overall, this is a dismal time for American higher education, as it is for the American elite in general. Once Trump is defeated, America will need a reckoning with this elite failure. After all, if the ruling class can’t even defend the basic norms of liberal democracy, why should they be allowed to rule at all?
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Felecia Phillips Ollie DD (h.c.) is the inspiring leader and founder of The Equality Network LLC (TEN). With a background in coaching, travel, and a career in news, Felecia brings a unique perspective to promoting diversity and inclusion. Holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English/Communications, she is passionate about creating a more inclusive future. From graduating from Mississippi Valley State University to leading initiatives like the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program, Felecia is dedicated to making a positive impact. Join her journey on our blog as she shares insights and leads the charge for equity through The Equality Network.
