TOI Correspondent from Washington: Fear and loathing are coursing through the academic community in America after reports of doxxing, detentions, and deportation proceedings of foreign students and scholars whose criticism of the US and Trump policies is seen as illegal and unwarranted activism tantamount to support for radical or extremist causes.
Earlier this week, France’s minister of higher education and research Philippe Baptiste said a French scientist was denied entry to the US on March 9 after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.
The unnamed researcher, on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), was traveling to a conference near Houston and was denied entry to the US before being expelled, Baptiste said.
Universities and college campuses, long considered liberal bastions if not leftist hotbeds, are reeling from a Trump administration crackdown that has seen foreign students detained without formal charges. Some of the students, including Khan Suri and Maphaz have been doxxed by pro-Israel activists.
In fact, the Israeli Embassy in Washington jumped into the fray on social media more than a month ago, alleging Maphaz “has expressed support for October 7 as an act of resistance and glorified terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands as martyrs.” She has also expressed hatred for the United States, declaring, “America is the plague,” the Embassy said in the post.
“Her tuition dollars are being paid by blood money. Her presence on campus is an active threat to Israeli and Jewish students. Is this what your administration stands for?” the Embassy asked in a February 13 post tagged to Georgetown University.
Campus administrations too are quietly folding under the threat of financial aid and grants being withheld, while agitating student activists are masking themselves to prevent identification by pro-Israeli groups intent on “exposing” them.
While Columbia University in New York keeled over without much resistance in the Mahmoud Khalil case after President Trump spiked a $ 400 million federal aid, Georgetown showed a little more spine, expressing its “support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable.”
“We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case (involving Khan Suri) fairly,” the University, whose alumni include Bill Clinton and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said.
Right wing activists have long been agitated by the Muslim groups protesting against developments in their homeland in western capitals. On Wednesday, Trump acolyte Linda Loomer said pro HAMAS protesters swarmed her outside of White House when she was filming a woman carrying a Hamas flag.
“This isn’t Gaza. This isn’t Tehran. This isn’t Damascus. This is Washington, DC in front of the White House tonight where protesters waved HAMAS flags and shouted Allahu Akbar during their mass prayer,” Loomer said.
“We are an occupied country,” she lamented
