Students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been subject to social media checks; now all students will face them - Yuki Iwamura/AP
All Foreign Students in US to Face Social Media Checks
There were 1.1 million international students studying in the US last year, providing a huge source of income for American universities.
President Trump has singled out Ivy League colleges for criticism, accusing them of fostering antisemitism by allowing pro-Palestinian protests and adopting biased admissions policies against white students.
In recent weeks, President Trump has frozen $3.2 billion in federal funding from Harvard and attempted to block the oldest university in the US from enrolling foreign students .
Harvard, which has an endowment of $53 billion, has responded with a flurry of lawsuits and succeeded in temporarily halting the ban on international admissions. On Tuesday, Trump ordered all federal agencies to cancel their remaining $100 million contracts with Harvard, according to The New York Times.
Until now, returning international students suspected of taking part in pro-Palestinian protests were the only group liable to face social media checks.
Ivy League colleges such as Princeton have been targeted by the Trump administration
It came after Secretary of State Rubio announced plans in March to revoke visas for students acting “counter” to US national interests. The changes resulted in more than 1,800 students facing deportation . In one instance, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national studying for a PhD at Tufts University on a Fulbright scholarship, was seized by masked immigration agents and kept at detention centers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Louisiana after she co-authored an article that was critical of the war in Gaza.
It remains unclear what sort of social media post could jeopardize a student’s visa application — for example, if posting an image of a Palestinian flag constituted an offence.
The president of Harvard, Alan Garber, urged American universities to stand “firm” against the White House as he denounced the “perplexing” attacks on Harvard .
“Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all, the research funding is not a gift,” he told NPR.
“The research funding is given to universities and other research institutions to carry out work — research work — that the federal government designates as high-priority work. It is work that they want done. They are paying to have that work conducted.”
“Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard, and it is hard to see the link between that and, say, antisemitism.” – The Times
