In the span of a week, a hush has descended on higher education in the United States.
International students and faculty have watched the growing crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University with apprehension. Some say they are familiar with government crackdowns but never expected them on American college campuses.
The elite New York City university has been the focus of the Trump administration’s effort to deport foreigners who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at colleges last year.
Federal immigration agents have arrested two foreigners — one of them a student — who protested last year at Columbia. They’ve revoked the visa of another student, who fled the US this week. Department of Homeland Security agents also searched the on-campus residences of two Columbia students on Thursday but did not make any arrests there.
GOP officials have warned it’s just the beginning, saying more student visas are expected to be revoked in the coming days.
Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism issued a statement reporting “an alarming chill” among its foreign students in the past week.
“Many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus,” said the statement signed by “The Faculty of Columbia Journalism School.”
It added: “They are right to be worried.”
Alarm at campuses across the country
International students and faculty across the US say they feel afraid to voice opinions or stand out on campus for fear of getting kicked out of the country.
“Green-card-holding faculty members involved in any kind of advocacy that might be construed as not welcome by the Trump administration are absolutely terrified of the implications for their immigration status,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Dubal, who is also general counsel for the American Association of University Professors, says some international faculty are now shying away from discourse, debate, scholarly research and publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals.
“We are literally not hearing their voices. There is a silencing happening that has a huge impact on the vibrancy of higher education,” Dubal said. “People are very, very scared.”
The first arrest
The first publicly known arrest occurred last Saturday, when federal immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist and outspoken graduate student, in the lobby of his apartment building near the Columbia campus.
Khalil has become the face of President Donald Trump’s drive to punish what he calls antisemitic and anti-American protests that swept US campuses last year. Khalil, a legal US resident with a green card, is being held in a federal detention complex in Louisiana.
Students and faculty who participated in the protests at Columbia have insisted criticizing Israel and advocating for Palestinian rights isn’t antisemitic. Some Jewish students and faculty say the anti-Israel rhetoric made them feel unsafe.
Civil rights advocates say the detention of Khalil is an assault on free speech. But the ongoing arrests send a wider message that disagreeing with the Trump administration could get you kicked out of the country, said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“If the administration can do this to Mr. Khalil because of the speech about Palestine, it can do it to any non-US citizen who takes a position on hot-button global issues, including the war between Russia and Ukraine, the tariffs imposed against US allies or the rise of far-right political parties in Europe,” he said.
That worry has spread outside New York.
A Bangladeshi student at Louisiana State University, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities, said she has stopped posting about anything political on social media since the first arrest at Columbia. She fears losing her green card.
“I feel like it’s not safe for me to share those things anymore because I have a fear that a quote-unquote ‘authoritarian regime’ is lurking over social media posts,” the student said. When she lived in Bangladesh, she said, people could be arrested for posting dissent on social media. “What I fear is a similar situation in the United States.”
Advice from colleges and universities
Some schools have been advising international students to be cautious of what they say publicly and to watch what they say online. Several international students on a variety of college campuses said they preferred not to speak with a reporter out of concern for their immigration status.
Administrators at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism have warned students who are not US citizens about their vulnerability to arrest or deportation.
“Nobody can protect you, these are dangerous times,” the school’s dean, Jelani Cobb, said in a post Thursday on Bluesky explaining the comment. “I went on to say that I would do everything in my power to defend our journalists and their right to report but that none of us had the capacity to stop DHS from jeopardizing their safety.”
At the University of California, Davis, the Global Affairs Program has updated its website with guidance on the First Amendment and advice on free speech for non-US citizens.
“While international students and scholars have broad rights to freedom of speech and lawful assembly, please be aware that being arrested or detained by law enforcement may trigger current and/or future immigration consequences,” the school says on its website. “Each person should take appropriate care and utilize their best judgment.”
Escalations after Khalil’s arrest
Immigration authorities’ activities at Columbia quickly escalated this week.
Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested by immigration officers for overstaying her student visa, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. The former student’s visa was terminated in January 2022 for “lack of attendance,” the department said. She was previously arrested for her involvement in protests at Columbia in April 2024, the agency added.
The Trump administration also revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Columbia University, for allegedly “advocating for violence and terrorism.” Srinivasan opted to “self-deport” Tuesday, five days after her visa was revoked, the department said.
The president has warned the arrest and attempted deportation of Khalil will be the “first of many.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Friday that more student visas were likely to be revoked in the coming days.
After Columbia arrests, international college students fall silent
https://arab.news/msvm3
After Columbia arrests, international college students fall silent
- Some say they are familiar with government crackdowns but never expected them on American college campuses
- International students say they feel afraid to voice opinions or stand out on campus for fear of getting kicked out of the country
China’s Xi declines EU invitation to anniversary summit, FT reports
- Beijing told EU officials that Premier Li Qiang would meet the presidents of the European Council and Commission instead of Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping has declined an invitation to visit Brussels for a summit to mark the 50th anniversary of EU-China diplomatic ties, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Beijing told EU officials that Premier Li Qiang would meet the presidents of the European Council and Commission instead of Xi, the FT said, citing two people familiar with the matter whom it did not identify.
The Chinese premier usually attends the summit when it is held in Brussels, while the president hosts it in Beijing, but the EU wants Xi to attend to commemorate half a century of relations between Beijing and the bloc, the newspaper said.
Tensions between Brussels and Beijing have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the EU accusing China of backing the Kremlin, the FT said. Last year, the European Union also imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports.
China’s Foreign Ministry and the EU did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
“Informal discussions are ongoing, both about setting the date for the EU-China summit this year and the level of representation,” an EU official told the newspaper, while the Chinese ministry was quoted as saying it did not have any information to provide on the matter.
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and the EU, its third-largest, spent most of 2024 exchanging barbs over allegations of overcapacity, illegal subsidies and dumping in each other’s markets.
In October, the EU imposed double-digit tariffs on China-made electric vehicles after an anti-subsidy investigation, in addition to its standard car import duty of 10 percent. The move drew loud protests from Beijing, which in return, raised market entry barriers for certain EU products such as brandy.
Tornadoes strike US South, killing 33 people amid rising risk
- Twenty-six tornadoes were reported but not confirmed to have touched down late on Friday night and early on Saturday
ATLANTA: Tornadoes killed at least 33 people across several states in the US Midwest and Southeast on Saturday night, CNN reported.
Missouri reported 12 fatalities spanning five counties, the state’s highway patrol posted on X.
Robbie Myers, the director of emergency management in Missouri’s Butler County, told reporters that more than 500 homes, a church and grocery store in the county were destroyed. A mobile home park had been “totally destroyed,” he said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves posted on X that six deaths had been reported in the state – one in Covington County, two in Jeff Davis County and three in Walthall County.
According to preliminary assessments, 29 people were injured statewide and 21 counties sustained storm damage, Reeves said.
In Arkansas, three deaths occurred, the state’s Department of Emergency Management said, adding that there were 32 injuries.
Twenty-six tornadoes were reported but not confirmed to have touched down late on Friday night and early on Saturday as a low-pressure system drove powerful thunderstorms across parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri, said David Roth, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station
- The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift
CAPE CANAVERAL: Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the US, Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and then rang the ship’s bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.
“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Williams told Mission Control.
Wilmore’s and Williams’ ride arrived back in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida’s coast.
Until then, there will be 11 aboard the orbiting lab, representing the US, Russia and Japan.
Trump ‘silences’ Voice of America and other US-funded networks, including Urdu service
- VOA director Michael Abramowitz says he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave this week
- US media outlets were seen as critical to countering Russian, Chinese information offensives
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday put journalists at Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly freezing decades-old outlets long seen as critical to countering Russian and Chinese information offensives.
Hundreds of staffers at VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received a weekend email saying they will be barred from their offices and should surrender press passes and office-issued equipment.
Trump, who has already eviscerated the US global aid agency and the Education Department, on Friday issued an executive order listing the US Agency for Global Media as among “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary.”
Kari Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter put in charge of the media agency after she lost a US Senate bid, said in an email to the outlets that federal grant money “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
The White House said the cuts would ensure “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” marking a dramatic tone shift toward the networks established to extend US influence overseas.
White House press official Harrison Fields wrote “goodbye” on X in 20 languages, a jab at the outlets’ multilingual coverage.
VOA director Michael Abramowitz said he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave Saturday.
“VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission,” he said on Facebook, noting that its coverage — in 48 languages — reaches 360 million people each week.
“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” Abramowitz said, adding that it has played an important role “in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world.”
The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which started broadcasting into the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the cancelation of funding “a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
“The Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years,” its president, Stephen Capus, said in a statement.
US-funded media have reoriented themselves since the end of the Cold War, dropping much of the programming geared toward newly democratic Central and Eastern European countries and focusing on Russia and China.
Chinese state-funded media have expanded their reach sharply over the past decade, including by offering free services to outlets in the developing world that would otherwise pay for Western news agencies.
Radio Free Asia, established in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reporting into countries without free media including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.
The outlets have an editorial firewall, with a stated guarantee of independence despite government funding.
The policy has angered some around Trump, who has long railed against media and suggested that government-funded outlets should promote his policies.
The move to end US-funded media is likely to meet challenges, much like Trump’s other sweeping cuts. Congress, not the president, has the constitutional power of the purse and Radio Free Asia in particular has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.
Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the decision, saying it “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting the free flow of information.”
Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and senior Democratic congresswoman Lois Frankel said in a joint statement that Trump’s move would “cause lasting damage to US efforts to counter propaganda around the world.”
One VOA employee, who requested anonymity, described Saturday’s message as another “perfect example of the chaos and unprepared nature of the process,” with VOA staffers presuming that scheduled programming is off but not told so directly.
A Radio Free Asia employee said: “It’s not just about losing your income. We have staff and contractors who fear for their safety. We have reporters who work under the radar in authoritarian countries in Asia. We have staff in the US who fear deportation if their work visa is no longer valid.”
“Wiping us out with the strike of a pen is just terrible.”
Russia, Ukraine continue air attacks with ceasefire prospects uncertain
- Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold
Russia and Ukraine continued aerial attacks on each other, inflicting injuries and damages, officials said early on Sunday, as the fate of a proposed ceasefire to the three-year-old war remained uncertain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he supported in principle Washington’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.
Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday that its air defense units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.
Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
In a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, three people were injured, including a 7-year-old, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app.
Two of the people were injured after a drone hit their house, sparking a fire in the Gubkinsky district of the region, while the other person was injured in a drone attack on the village of Dolgoye, Gladkov said.
Alexander Gusev, governor of Voronezh, said on Telegram that there was no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The acting governor of the southern Russian region of Rostov said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage reported there either.
In Ukraine, authorities reported several Russian drone strikes, including on the northern region of Chernihiv, where firefighters were battling a blaze at a high-rise building that was sparked by Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s state of emergency service said.
Ukrainian media reported a series of explosions in the region surrounding the capital Kyiv, after Ukraine’s air force issued warnings of a threat of drone attacks on Kyiv and a number of other central Ukrainian regions.
By 0300 GMT on Sunday, there was no official information about damage in the Kyiv region.
