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David French
New York Times
Excerpt: Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime.
The story of Columbia isn’t simply about Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student in international affairs there who was one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian protests that burst into view almost immediately after the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. But when federal immigration officials showed up at his apartment building last weekend and whisked him away to a facility in Louisiana to begin deportation proceedings, they brought the malice and incompetence of the Trump administration into stark relief.
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.
Liam Knox and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: On Tuesday, the Trump administration fired nearly half of the Education Department’s roughly 4,100 employees, leaving the agency with a skeletal staff of about 2,183. Now, a day later, the scope and impact of those layoffs are beginning to take shape.
The nation’s largest education research agency went from roughly 100 employees to about five, according to a laid-off employee, crippling the government’s capacity to inform education policy. The Office of Federal Student Aid lost hundreds of career staffers, undermining oversight of student loan practices, the maintenance of the federal financial aid system and the authorization of new programs. And the Office for Civil Rights, which fields thousands of student and educator complaints about discrimination and harassment each year, is now down to just five regional offices.
Liam Knox and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: On Tuesday, the Trump administration fired nearly half of the Education Department’s roughly 4,100 employees, leaving the agency with a skeletal staff of about 2,183. Now, a day later, the scope and impact of those layoffs are beginning to take shape.
The nation’s largest education research agency went from roughly 100 employees to about five, according to a laid-off employee, crippling the government’s capacity to inform education policy. The Office of Federal Student Aid lost hundreds of career staffers, undermining oversight of student loan practices, the maintenance of the federal financial aid system and the authorization of new programs. And the Office for Civil Rights, which fields thousands of student and educator complaints about discrimination and harassment each year, is now down to just five regional offices.
Nicholas B. Dirks
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The first time Donald Trump threatened to use the power of the presidency to punish a university, I was the target. At UC Berkeley, where I was chancellor, campus police had at the last moment canceled an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right political pundit who was then a star at Breitbart News, because of a violent attack on the venue by a group of outside left-wing activists who objected to Yiannopoulos’s presence.
I didn’t worry much about Trump’s threat at the time. I now realize that was a mistake. American universities did not cause the onslaught that the second Trump administration is unleashing upon them. But they would be in a much stronger position today if they had made a proactive case to the public for their own importance—and taken steps to address their very real shortcomings.
FIRE
Excerpt: It’s been three days since the government arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. This afternoon, the administration finally stated the basis for its actions. Its explanation threatens the free speech of millions of people.
Yesterday, an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law.” This was confirmed today by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who announced Khalil is being targeted under a law that she characterized as allowing the secretary of state to personally deem individuals “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”