The President’s Dismantling of Precedent
Our freedoms are slipping through our fingers—have you been noticing?
Joshua Kloss
For a nation whose First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly, we seem to have lost our way.
Several countries have begun advising caution to people visiting the United States, including our closest neighbors. A French scientist was denied entry to the U.S. in early March after conversations on his phone revealed criticism of President Trump. Customs and Border Protection have always retained the right to search personal technology, but the phenomenon is growing less rare as the president begins unflinchingly down the barrel of freedom of speech. Criticism of the president—exercising free speech, that is—has become grounds for denial of entry to the land of the free.
The freedom to speak is seeing contention within our homeland, too; it does not concern just visiting tourists. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 and shipped him hours from his home state to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. His detainment was politically motivated—given his role as a student activist who helped many of Columbia’s Israel divestment protests last year—and illegal: agents showed up in plainclothes, refused to show a warrant, and denied Khalil due process before taking him into custody. The agents cited ambiguous orders, and claimed they were acting under order of the State Department to revoke Khalil’s student visa. When Khalil notified agents of his permanent residency (green card), they changed their story to say they would revoke his permanent residency status, too.
The detainment of Mahmoud Khalil should be a nonpartisan issue concerning the future of the freedom of speech and assembly, given that the Trump administration has clarified that Khalil committed no crimes, but rather that his arrest is punishment for his pro-Palestine advocacy. Pro-Palestinian speech was already harshly scrutinized prior to the Trump-Vance administration and remains often unfairly conflated with anti-Semitism. Now, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, has said that Khalil’s arrest was in support of a recent executive order signed by Trump that prohibits anti-Semitism. And since Khalil’s deportation, several other students have faced either deportation attempts—entailing ICE agents showing up at their homes—such as Yunseo Chung, who is now suing several federal officials including Trump, and Ranjani Srinivasan, who fled to Canada to escape deportation.
Trump’s heavy-handed employment of ICE as a fear tactic tells students everywhere that protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not allowed. That is, unless you’d like to potentially face persecution, with no promise of due process. This is Trump saying, ‘Yes, we can turn you into a political asylum-seeker,’ as Srinivasan is now. This is Trump saying, ‘Yes, we can pick you up right off the street,’ as they did to Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk at the end of March, which was thankfully recorded on video. From here, it’s a very slippery slope. If ICE can pluck someone with no criminal record, legally residing in the U.S., who was enjoying their first amendment right to protest, from their home or off the sidewalk, then they can do the very same thing to any of us. And this sets a chillingly uncertain precedent for the future of public protest, speech, and press.
The ability to freely criticize Israel or express support for Palestine is increasingly under attack, even here at our own campus. A recent resolution passed mid-March by the Board of Regents restricts statements made by groups of department members to require approval from President Cunningham. This comes shortly after two separate federal investigations were opened into the University of Minnesota for anti-semitism—one from the U.S. Department of Justice and another from the Department of Education. Some arguments for the investigation cited statements made by the University’s Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies department from October 2023 that deemed Israel’s violence “a genocidal war against Gaza,” according to reporting from the MN Daily. That headline—covering the resolution—reads, ‘A very dangerous time.’
A very dangerous time indeed.
Nathaniel Mills, associate professor in the University’s department of English, said that collective statements by department members are important for freedom in academia. “For a group of faculty to be able to collectively say, ‘Here is where we, as experts / scholars in our field, stand on this issue,’ without fear of being silenced or targeted, is central to academic freedom,” Mills said in an email statement to The Wake.
Now, Trump’s administration is leveraging threats of investigation and fund-withholding to dictate the administrative policies of universities, something the National American Association of University Professors refers to as “anticipatory obedience.” They first did this successfully at Columbia, Mills said.
“A majority of the regents have simply decided that anticipatory obedience is, right now, more important than the academic freedom rights of its scholarly experts,” Mills said. Furthermore, the decision is indicative of “a strategy of compromising academic freedom to divert some of the federal government's attention from [the University].”
In essence, the University seems to be following in Columbia’s footsteps: anticipatory obedience in hope for future refuge from Trump’s crusades. While this decision mainly targets academic freedom, there also remains an uncertain future for the freedom of speech.
“Nothing positive or beneficial has ever come from restricting the platform and discursive freedom of academics,” Mills said in the statement. “In fact, capitulations by institutions to such pressures are often signs of the rise of authoritarianism.” Furthermore, such limits on speech downplay the credibility of academics when they speak out on political issues, minimizing the role that academics play in research and their respective fields, he added. “Faculty statements are not just offhand takes or hunches that some radical professors want the University to disseminate,” Mills said. “Rather, they are position statements that reflect an interpretation made by scholars, that their field deems to be legitimate (but not necessarily popular or definitively correct), of an event or matter of current public concern.”
Joel Delikowski, co-chair of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) at the University, said that the regents’ decision shouldn’t be boiled down to fear of Trump’s administration alone. “The Trump administration cracking down on free speech and student protest just makes Cunningham’s job easier,” Delikowski said. “Now, she has someone else to blame for things that she already wanted to do and wanted to see at this University.” President Cunningham was hired shortly after last year’s encampments at the University, which was part of a wider nationwide trend at several universities where students demanded divestment from Israel. Cunningham was deliberately chosen, Delikowski said. “Partially, specifically, because [Cunningham] would be a heavier hitter on student protests.”
Delikowski added that the resolution would have far-reaching implications for organizing groups like YDSA. “This impedes our ability to organize, it impedes our ability to work with faculty, and it impedes our ability to work with departments on a case-by-case basis. It scares professors away from working with us, and that is a huge worry to me, especially [since] we are going to have to rely on professors in departments a lot more to protect immigrant students and students with green cards on this campus,” Delikowski said.
Delikowski raises an extremely valid concern, given that the University has already signaled their unwillingness to protect students from ICE when they announced intention to follow court-approved ICE orders at the end of January. Furthermore, the regents’ anticipatory obedience means they will likely do little to stand in the way of ICE deporting highly-vocal, visa-holding activists from our own University.
Though this is a fearful time, Delikowski emphasized the importance of organizing, especially for those of us who are citizens and can stand up to protect our marginalized neighbors. Organizations like YDSA, Students for a Democratic Society, and Students for Justice in Palestine are all accessible places for students to get involved and organized. Delikowski added that organizing can look like a lot of things, and there is always a need for busy work such as working with data, making graphics, and working on communications.
“You don’t need to put yourself in a position that is going to make you a public target,” Delikowski said.
Readers interested in a low-commitment introduction to YDSA can try attending a meeting, held every Thursday. Or, by filling out their interest form, you can meet one-on-one with a steering member to talk about what type of activism you are interested in. As someone who is easily intimidated by entering new groups, I highly recommend taking one of these routes—the time to try organizing is now.
With deportations of lawful green cardholders and the regents restricting group speech at our campus, our future free speech is in peril. By proxy, so is the future of free press. After the Associated Press (AP) refused to update its style to reflect President Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, a reporter from the AP was denied entry to the Oval Office. At the end of February, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the White House Correspondents’ Association would no longer oversee which reporters get access to the president, and rather that the president himself would now cherry-pick. Restricting access to the president is alarming to say the least, given that the nearly century-long precedent of the correspondent’s association choosing which reporters was in place to ensure fair, all-encompassing reporting of the president’s moves, order-signing, and so on.
This is to say that we don’t know what future discretions will cause Trump to lash out. We don’t know what punishment he might deem fit for journalists who dare call Israeli warfare against civilians and children genocide. He has already threatened deportation to El Salvador for people who damage Tesla property. His utter disregard for Constitutionality or lawfulness has proven to be a wrecking ball to all that we hold sacred: things like our freedom to walk the streets without fear of being approached by a plain-clothed fed; things like speaking our minds and sharing our individual opinions; like protesting things that we know aren’t right.
Some federal judges have already checked Trump and balanced his executive bloodlust, like blocking moves they know to go against our constitution. Though, some such judges are also seeing their orders blatantly ignored. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the immediate stop to the deportation of hundreds of people to El Salvador mid-March, then was told that the deportation was already in progress. A tweet satirizing the judge’s attempt to block the forced removal with the words “Too late!” was reposted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X, indicating a complete disrespect for the rule and proceeding of law that our nation has so long boasted.
So yes, Trump will do all he can to scare us; he will send ICE agents in everyday streetwear; he will imprison political opponents and convince you that you are next. But everywhere good people are fighting back—the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, rushed in to join Mahmoud Khalil’s legal team and federal judges like Boasberg continue to try and block orders they know go against what our nation stands for. Of course, Trump’s alarming dismissal of some orders creates uncertainty, and room for what some reckon will turn out as a constitutional crisis.
This is all to say, I don’t know what will happen next. Nobody does. That is why we organize.
Furthermore, we cannot stop talking. We must do so loudly.