Jacob Mchangama
Persuasion
Excerpt: When asked on Wednesday about the arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for his pro-Palestinian protest activities last year, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan resorted to a common refrain often used to justify egregious censorship.
But this doesn’t give the government a blank check to punish Khalil for his speech, however distasteful. The First Amendment does not have an exception for hate speech, and for good reason.
Sara Weissman
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Federal immigration authorities arrested a Tufts Ph.D. student Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to deport pro-Palestinian activists, The Boston Globe reported.
The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, is a Turkish national in the U.S. on a student visa. Her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, told The Boston Globe she isn’t aware of any charges against her client. Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to the campus pro-Palestinian movement, and her information had been posted on Canary Mission, a website that publicizes the identities of pro-Palestinian activists. Khanbabai initially didn’t know where Ozturk was taken and couldn’t contact her, the attorney said.
Nolan L. Cabrera
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: This is a call to my dear faculty friends and colleagues in higher education institutions. In the first months of the new presidential administration, and indeed since the election, many have been searching for answers. I have been in more meetings, gatherings and brain dump sessions than I can count, all focused on the same existential question: What does this all mean?
I am not calling for us to be lacking in strategy or unaware of our contexts. However, I am extremely concerned that a number of my fellow academics are engaging in pre-emptive self-censorship.
Nathan Honeycutt
FIRE
Excerpt: Supporters claim that requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in job applications can help foster those values. But critics say it does just the opposite. Findings from a new study I conducted supports the latter position, and they come just as schools are backing away from DEI.
The University of California said last week it will stop requiring standalone DEI statements in faculty hiring. The Chronicle of Higher Education has tracked the dismantling of DEI efforts at colleges, including the 10 states passing legislation to restrict the use of DEI statements on campuses.