The mood on the campus of Brown University, a hotbed of student protest last year, is now one of fear and intimidation, according to some students.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Students at Brown University say a culture of fear is growing on campus. That’s as the federal government takes more steps to retaliate against the school for protests last year, including revoking the visas of some Brown students and expanding a civil rights investigation into the school. Olivia Ebertz of Rhode Island member station The Public’s Radio Reports.
OLIVIA EBERTZ, BYLINE: Last year, Brown University saw many campus demonstrations in favor of the Palestinian cause. There were regular rallies on the main green…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) No more money for Israel’s crimes (ph).
EBERTZ: …A hunger strike, and over 60 students were arrested during the course of after-hours protests. But this year, it usually sounds closer to this.
Students at Brown say protesting on campus has nearly vanished since the school punished demonstrators and banned its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
LIFTA: A climate of fear, intimidation, censorship – that seems to be, like, the overwhelming atmosphere on campus.
EBERTZ: That’s Lifta, a Palestinian Canadian doctoral student who’s going by a childhood nickname because of her fears of deportation and detainment. These fears have gotten a lot more concrete since the Trump administration deported Brown Medical School professor Dr. Rasha Alawieh back to Lebanon. She admitted she had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Her lawyer says she was deported unjustly.
The Trump administration has also revoked the visas of other members of the Brown community. Lifta’s fears have also led her to change her plans to attend a conference and to see family in Canada. She’s even asking her father not to come visit her to celebrate her recent engagement. He’s originally from the Palestinian territories.
LIFTA: He’s older. He’s an older man, but he’s just faced so much persecution at borders his whole life that I worry. Like, the racial profiling, I’m sure, is going to be a problem for him, even on a Canadian passport.
EBERTZ: Besides LIFTA, I also spoke to a transgender PhD candidate here on a student visa, who didn’t want to use her name or be recorded for broadcast for fear of retribution. Although she’s secured a prestigious tenure track position for next year, she’s considering declining it and moving back home, where she says she, quote, “wouldn’t be at the same risk of state violence.” Here, she’s concerned she could wind up in a men’s prison.
Many international students who do not feel vulnerable told me they still feel that things have really changed on campus. Here’s German doctoral student Immanuel, who asked that we only use his middle name out of concerns that Brown could revoke his funding.
IMMANUEL: It’s much less self-evident that I will be supported by the university.
EBERTZ: The school has been preemptively tightening its belts since even before the Trump administration threatened to withhold more than half a billion dollars in federal funds. Now Immanuel said he might not be able to find funding to study ancient Greek, which is a foundational skill for his training in ancient Greek philosophy. Like many in the Brown community, Immanuel moved thousands of miles across an ocean to attend a school where he thought he’d have the freedom and funding to pursue his academic career the way he wants. And Palestinian Canadian doctoral student Lifta says students must pick up their activism once again to fight back against these financial cuts and crackdowns.
LIFTA: And so we have to also learn how to rebuild the morale in the face of excruciating loss because we’re in a position where we have a duty and obligation to continue.
EBERTZ: It’s not clear yet whether Brown University will cede to demands the federal government might make of them. But last week, hundreds of professors at Brown signed an open letter to the school’s president. They called on her to use the school’s more than $7 billion endowment to protect what they called a, quote, “unprecedented assault on free speech and higher education.” For NPR News, I’m Olivia Ebertz in Providence.
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