Trump order pushes universities to ‘monitor’ pro-Palestine protesters on student visas

Universities have set up task forces, tightened discipline policies and used surveillance cameras to track protesters’ movements. They have hired private investigators to examine cases of anti-Israel speech and activism.

These are just a few of the measures administrators have taken to curb criticisms that they have allowed antisemitism to fester as pro-Palestinian demonstrations spread across campuses during the last academic year.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an order meant to push them to do more — to “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”

Specifically, it directed several agencies, including the State and Education departments, to guide colleges to “report activities by alien students and staff” that could be considered antisemitic or supportive of terrorism so that those students or staff members could be investigated or deported as noncitizens.

The wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel have mostly been nonviolent. Protesters have said they are exercising their right of free expression, by demonstrating against Israel’s conduct in the war in the Gaza Strip. But some protests have led to vandalism and clashes between pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators. The police have been called to campuses to break up encampments and protests, and in the process, hundreds of students have been arrested.

Many Jewish students have said they felt unsafe or unsettled by the yelling outside their dormitory and classroom windows and threatened by the chanting of slogans that some construe as antisemitic.

After several university presidents were pulled in front of congressional committees to testify about their responses to the unrest, many have taken action to quell protest activity.

At Columbia University, for example, administrators pledged quick disciplinary action this month after four masked protesters interrupted a “History of Modern Israel” class and handed out flyers with antisemitic themes, such as one image of a jackboot crushing a Star of David. Three of the protesters have been identified; one, a Columbia student, was suspended. The other two, students of an “affiliated school,” were barred from campus.

“Disruptions to our classrooms and our academic mission and efforts to intimidate or harass our students are not acceptable, are an affront to every member of our University community, and will not be tolerated,” the institution said in a statement.

At New York University, administrators updated the nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy to clarify that discriminatory or hateful language against protected groups, even if masked in “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” could be examples of potentially discriminatory speech at the school that merits punishment.

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the document states, referring to the belief that Jewish people should have a state in their ancient homeland. “For example, excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, and applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any NYU activity” would all be discriminatory actions.

A growing number of universities, including NYU and Harvard University, are recognizing a definition of antisemitism that considers some criticism of Israel — such as calling its creation a “racist endeavor” — antisemitic. This has prompted concern among pro-Palestinian students and professors that their freedom of speech and their ability to protest Israeli actions will be severely curtailed.

The presidential order comes against a backdrop of both debate over what constitutes antisemitism and Republican insinuations that foreign students have played a particular role in the protests.

Foreign student visas were discussed in a December 2024 staff report on antisemitism, conducted on behalf of six House committees in coordination with the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

The report complained that three weeks after the Hamas attacks on Israel, Alejandro Mayorkas, the former homeland security secretary, declined to say whether foreign students should have their visas revoked if they “advocate for the elimination of Israel and attacks on Jewish individuals.” He said it was a matter of legal interpretation.

The report said that the Biden administration had rebuffed requests from the House Judiciary Committee for documents and information, such as nationality, on “aliens on student visas who endorse Hamas’ terrorist activities.”

In May, the State Department told the committee that it had not revoked any visas for students related to their on-campus protest activity.

During testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in December 2023, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were grilled on whether they had suspended or planned to suspend foreign students who violated the law or school policies.

Claudine Gay, then the president of Harvard, who was later forced to resign in part over her testimony on antisemitism, replied that international students were a source of pride and that all students were held accountable in the same way.

At Harvard’s commencement, hundreds of students walked out in protest over the university’s decision to bar 13 seniors from the ceremony in the wake of campus protests against the war in Gaza. Among 25 students who were punished for their participation in protests were two Rhodes scholars. One of the Rhodes scholars was an international student from Pakistan.

At Cornell University, Momodou Taal, a British national in his third year of doctoral studies, was among a group of about 100 protesters who shut down a recruitment event last fall that included weapons manufacturers.

Suspended twice by the university for his pro-Palestinian activism, Taal was at risk of losing his student visa, which could lead to deportation. In the end, the Cornell provost allowed him to retain his official status as an enrolled student, although he was banned from campus.