Students Blacklisted, Students Arrested: All Voices of Reason, Speak Up Now

On March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD student on a valid visa, was walking down a Somerville street when a man in a hoodie and a baseball cap approached her. Surveillance footage that has since gone viral captures how Ozturk’s arrest unfolded. The sound of her panicking voice as she is surrounded by six plainclothes officers and snatched off the street is hard to shake.

This could be the voice of someone you love.

Accused of supporting Hamas, Ozturk was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana, facing deportation (though it has been halted by a judge). Several pro-Israel groups have taken credit for providing information that led to Ozturk’s arrest and others like it. One such group announced that it is about to release many hundreds more names and has asked its supporters to contribute more to report to ICE.

We are entering an era of campus proscriptions. All voices of reason, please speak up and exert what influence you have on groups and individuals who support such activities to stop immediately. Whoever is behind this: You are helping to create a very ugly world in which you and yours will not be safer either.

Remember how we got here. Following the atrocious Oct. 7 attacks, multiple Harvard student groups put the blame on the Israeli government. Calls arose immediately to blacklist the students affiliated with these groups.

Within days, names were leaked, including some of students who reportedly weren’t involved in deciding to sign the statement or who had even already graduated. Doxxing trucks appeared displaying faces of students accused of being “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” I remember a disproportionate presence of women identifiable as Muslim through their dress. Websites were created to cover alleged antisemitic activities, listing students from universities around the country as offenders. Students were blacklisted. It seems these websites are still being maintained, and now pitched at an administration willing to act on them. These students are now getting arrested.

The only apparent evidence available to back the claim that Rumeysa was “supporting Hamas” is a co-authored piece in the Tufts student newspaper. The piece does not mention Hamas and does nothing that remotely counts as glorifying or defending terrorism. According to friends and colleagues, she was not a leader of protests, nor has she in any way been associated with violence, let alone been charged with it. And yet, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about her detention, he talked about students availing themselves of visas only to vandalize our campuses, harass students, take over buildings, and create “a ruckus.” The agitated manner in which Rubio speaks about a person who is not even credibly accused of any of these things shows how much he has lost his moral compass.

Rubio’s implicit message is clear: Do not come if you do not agree with the government – we will find ways of getting to you and we have ways of really hurting you. From now on, non-citizens have to fear speaking candidly about politics, lest their name appear on some list the government might utilize eventually to snatch them from the street and deport them. And the threat does not stop there — the government might yet find some arcane law that enables them to do something similar to citizens when they can be brought into connection with alleged terrorism, perhaps just by attending events.

Meanwhile, a March 2024 study  from the University of Chicago indicates that college students by and large are capable of distinguishing hatred of Jews from criticisms of Israel: On average, they are not more antisemitic than the general American public, while also being more critical of Israel. This is not to deny that antisemitism is one form of bigotry that does live on our campus, but we must keep things in perspective.

Legally, non-citizens have due process rights, but may not have real First Amendment rights. In a statement to ABC News to explain the arrest, the Department of Homeland Security pointed out that “a visa is a privilege not a right.” Agreed. But that does not mean it is acceptable to cancel visas capriciously. It is wrong to cancel someone’s visa because the holder articulated a view that is well within the reasonable range of debated views and in fact shared by millions of people.

Only authoritarian regimes cancel a person’s legal status on such grounds. For non-citizens to participate in political debates is a way of honoring American values, and that is all Rumeysa seems to have done. Besides, freedom of speech and opinion is a human right outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: People have it in virtue of being human, not in having some legal status. By inviting non-citizens to join political debates in the U.S., we enrich our own culture, we honor American distinctiveness, and we also honor the humanity of all contributors to these debates.

People are frightened. Rumeysa was frightened. Again, her voice is hard to shake. She was frightened because she held opinions that millions share but of which others do not approve. And those who do not approve have the power to dispatch ICE. Thousands who have expressed sympathy with the people of Gaza one way or another, people who are in the country on visas or on green cards, people of color, women: They are watching the footage of Rumeysa’s arrest, and they no longer know what will happen to them once they walk down a street in their neighborhood.

And Harvard is not helping. Alongside other universities, Harvard has removed people in roles concerned with the Middle East without providing public explanations as to why that is happening. Those who have reason to be frightened will be even more frightened by such news.

Harvard is the country’s oldest and most visible university. Members of our community, including alumni, have special moral obligations to this country, and to the world. They have special obligations to American values and human rights.

Voices of reason, please speak up. We all should be frightened, and if you are not, you are missing the bigger picture.

Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.