The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. called on local universities to resist federal pressure to silence student activism in a letter sent to presidents and provosts on March 20, citing concerns over recent arrests and executive actions by the Trump administration.
The group urged eight institutions — American University, Catholic University of America, Gallaudet University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Howard University, Trinity Washington University and the University of the District of Columbia — to uphold free speech protections and reject involvement in immigration enforcement.
AU declined to comment on the letter when asked by The Eagle.
“We want the universities to stand up for their students, and that means a few things,” said Scott Michelman, ACLU of D.C.’s legal director, in an interview with The Eagle. “[Universities] need to not be bullied into shutting down student speech because the [Trump administration] wants them to.”
The letter responds to two executive orders — including one that ordered that the government “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas” — and other recent federal actions against students. Many of President Donald Trump’s orders have been issued under the premise that they protect national security or combat antisemitism.
On March 17, immigration agents detained Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown, and revoked his student visa over alleged ties to a “senior advisor to Hamas.” Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University and green card holder, was detained on March 8 and slated for deportation after protesting Israel’s war in Gaza.
The ACLU of AU and Washington College of Law’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild sent a similar letter to President Jonathan Alger, Board of Trustees Chair Gina Adams, incoming Board Chair Charles Lydecker and members of Alger’s cabinet. Based on the same four guiding principles as the ACLU of D.C.’s letter, it called for administrators to take up seven action items.
The steps the student groups asked AU to assume are:
- Publicly commit, in a statement and a community forum, to protecting the community’s right to free expression and academic freedom.
- Inform the community what threats AU has received from the Department of Education.
- Release information about the University’s data collection processes, remove information that might indicate students’ immigration status, refuse to share information with federal law enforcement unless required by law and find alternatives to referring student misconduct cases to the police.
- Declare AU a sanctuary campus for immigrants and non-citizens and prioritize protections for other groups targeted by the Trump administration, such as pro-Palestinian protesters and transgender and gender non-conforming people.
- Update policies to proactively protect students’ free speech and bar law enforcement from campus protests.
- Commit to due process, including the presumption of innocence, in policy violation and misconduct proceedings.
- Rescind invitations for Homeland Security agencies to attend career fairs or events and refuse to invite them in the future.
When it comes to balancing addressing harassment and discrimination claims with protecting free speech, Michelman advises universities to “pay close attention to the facts and the law and less attention to the media and the hype.”
“They should be standing up for Jewish students in combating anti-Semitism, they should also be standing up for students who have been engaged in impassioned protest over the war in Gaza, and recognizing that those two things are not incompatible,” Michelman said.
Michelman wrote in the letter that the Trump administration is using immigration laws to suppress free speech, and universities’ compliance would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin in federally-funded programs.
The letter from ACLU of D.C. outlines four key legal protections for campus speech:
- The First Amendment prohibits the government from coercing third parties to do what it cannot do directly: suppressing ideas it does not like and punishing the speakers who espouse them.
- Universities aren’t required to be involved in immigration law enforcement.
- Schools must protect the privacy of all students, including immigrant and international students.
- Schools must abide by the 14th Amendment and Title VI.
The crackdown on campus speech extends beyond student arrests.
Earlier this month, interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin threatened to blacklist Georgetown University Law Center students from his office’s fellowships, internships and employment programs after saying the school “continues to teach and promote D.E.I.”
Trump promised to cut federal funding for schools that touch upon any concepts deemed divisive — race, gender and systemic oppression — and with which the Trump administration disagrees. Civil rights groups such as the ACLU and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee argue that these discriminatory efforts disproportionately target international students.
Suri’s legal team said he was detained because of his wife’s Palestinian identity and constitutionally protected speech. Additionally, while a federal judge has temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation, his fate remains uncertain.
The ACLU of D.C. emphasized that the Trump administration’s demands go against universities’ missions.
“Arresting and deporting or threatening immigration status of people on the basis of speech is one of the most extreme threats to free speech our country has seen in a long time, because the consequences are so grave and the chilling effect so broad,” Michelman said.
In response to these ongoing attacks on free speech and education, students are mobilizing across the country to take a stand. On Friday, April 4, students from American, Georgetown, Howard, George Washington, George Mason, Temple University and D.C. public schools are rallying at the U.S. Department of Education to take a stance against the Trump administration’s assault on education and freedoms.
RSVP at bit.ly/handsoffschools.
Tyler Davis contributed reporting to this article.
This article was edited by Owen Auston-Babcock, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Olivia Citarella, Hannah Langenfeld and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
