AMERICA IS A FASCIST STATE
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism fascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.
AMERICA IS A ROGUE STATE
A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
N.Y.U. Langone Cancels Doctor’s Speech, Citing Anti-Government Tone
Dr. Joanne Liu, an N.Y.U. graduate, said the cancellation of her presentation on humanitarian crises was a sign of the climate of fear at U.S. universities.
Listen to this article · 5:15 minutes
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Dr. Joanne Liu said she was told that her invitation to speak at N.Y.U. Langone was being rescinded because her presentation could be perceived as antigovernment and antisemitic. Credit: Amir Hamja/The New York Times
by Jenny Gross
April 2, 2025
New York Times
The night before Dr. Joanne Liu was scheduled to deliver a long-planned speech at N.Y.U. Langone Health, the hospital affiliated with her alma mater, she received a call that stunned her. Her presentation on humanitarian crises was being canceled, the university official on the other end of the line said.
The reason, Dr. Liu said she was told, was that her presentation could be perceived as antigovernment and antisemitic.
To Dr. Liu, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and a pediatric emergency physician at Sainte-Justine hospital, the cancellation underscored the fear among leaders of U.S. universities of upsetting the Trump administration amid its crackdown on higher education.
Dr. Liu had already traveled to New York from Montreal for the speech, scheduled for March 19, when she got the call, she said in an interview on Monday. After she arrived, a university official raised concerns about the presentation’s reference to U.S.A.I.D. cuts and about the inclusion of a chart that detailed the number of aid workers killed around the world, including in Gaza, South Sudan and Sudan, she said.
The official, whom Dr. Liu declined to name, said that the slide “could be perceived as antisemitic” because it mentioned aid worker casualties in Gaza but not in Israel, said Dr. Liu, who was international president of Doctors Without Borders from 2013 to 2019.
Dr. Liu offered to change the three slides that posed concerns, she said. But three hours later, she was told the speech would be canceled.
The incident unfolded against the backdrop of a slew of executive orders and policy dictates from President Trump that have set off self-censoring at institutions fearful of government funding being revoked. The president has targeted universities early in his second term, pushing a vision for higher education that he says defends “the American tradition and Western civilization” and prepares people for the work force while limiting protests and research.
With threats of targeted executive orders and canceled funding, Mr. Trump has extracted concessions from elite universities, as well as law firms and other institutions that he perceives as his enemies.
The Trump administration has, in recent weeks, pulled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. On Monday, the administration said it would review about $9 billion in contracts and multiyear grants at Harvard University, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students and promoting “divisive ideologies over free inquiry.”
And in late February, lawyers for NYU Langone Health, where Dr. Liu was set to give her speech, proposed eliminating references to “diverse students” and removing the word “marginalized” from websites and policy statements, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The New York Times.
A spokesman for NYU Langone Health, a leading hospital system in Manhattan with an affiliated medical school, did not respond to questions about why Dr. Liu’s speech was canceled last month.
The spokesman, Steve Ritea, said in a statement that guest speakers are given clear guidelines. “Per our policy, we cannot host speakers who don’t comply,” he said. “In this case, we did fully compensate this guest for her travel and time.” He did not provide any details about the guidelines when asked.
Dr. Liu, who said she had been invited to give the speech at N.Y.U. a year ago, described the official who rescinded her invitation to speak as emotional and apologetic. She said the cancellation of her presentation was a reflection of the climate of fear inside U.S. universities.
Dr. Liu said she had sympathy for the struggle of faculty members to maintain their funding, adding, “At the end of the day, that’s their job, their teaching, their life, their research.” She said she was speaking out about what happened to her, including in an essay in Le Devoir, a French-language newspaper in Montreal, to “tell people where we are going.” Universities, she said, should remain sanctuaries of knowledge and places where students go to be exposed to different ways of thinking.
Mr. Trump’s pressure on universities has led at least one professor to leave the country. Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale University, said in an interview with NPR that aired on Tuesday that he was leaving to take a position at the University of Toronto. Dr. Stanley, a philosophy professor, said that the Trump administration was following a classic fascist playbook in targeting intellectuals, and that concessions by elite universities set a dangerous precedent.
Dr. Stanley said in the interview that by cracking down on universities, ostensibly in the name of protecting Jews, the Trump administration was fomenting antisemitism among the public. “It’s going to create mass popular anger against Jewish people,” he said. “If universities want to fight antisemitism, they need to stand up and say, ‘No, we are not threats to American Jews. You are threatening American Jews.’”
Campus Crackdown:
Professors Pushed Harvard to Resist Trump. Now Billions Are on the Line.
April 1, 2025
Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped
March 21, 2025
How Does It Feel to Be an International Student in the U.S. Now?
March 31, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
More about Jenny Gross
See more on: New York University Langone Health, Donald Trump
More on Higher Education in America:
A Mysterious Group: Civil rights advocates say Canary Mission, which says its mission is to expose antisemitic students, is doxxing critics of Israel and providing a possible road map for immigration agents as they sweep up students in a campus crackdown.
Columbia Campus Occupation: The university’s move to use police force to clear demonstrators from a campus building last spring could potentially have been avoided, according to a report released by the university’s senate.
Cornell Student: Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian Ph.D. student at the university who had faced possible deportation after participating in pro-Palestinian protests, said that he had left the United States.
Naval Academy: The school said it had ended its use of affirmative action in admissions, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has ordered that the academy identify books related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion themes in the school’s library and remove them from circulation.
Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies: The center’s director and associate director will be leaving their positions, according to two professors with direct knowledge of the moves. Faculty members who have spoken with both professors say each believes they were forced out of their posts.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZsS9LqSgwrU9AVdkGUL5P?si=b-Bph-dzRXCWn30mEtlYjA&nd=1&dlsi=62d9ef7dda5e4e24
New Podcast Episode
Princton’s President Responds To Attacks On Higher Education
Big Take
Tuesday: April 1, 2025
Podcast interview length: 39 minutes and 59 seconds
Episode Description
The Trump administration is targeting higher education. Colleges and universities across the United States are faced with the threat of funding freezes over their handling of free speech, anti-semitism and transgender issues, among other topics, on campus.
Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber joins host David Gura to discuss the newly announced freeze on some federal grants, the role of academic research, Princeton’s commitment to free speech and more.
See more on: New York University Langone Health, Donald Trump
More on Higher Education in America:
A Mysterious Group: Civil rights advocates say Canary Mission, which says its mission is to expose antisemitic students, is doxxing critics of Israel and providing a possible road map for immigration agents as they sweep up students in a campus crackdown.
Columbia Campus Occupation: The university’s move to use police force to clear demonstrators from a campus building last spring could potentially have been avoided, according to a report released by the university’s senate.
Cornell Student: Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian Ph.D. student at the university who had faced possible deportation after participating in pro-Palestinian protests, said that he had left the United States.
Naval Academy: The school said it had ended its use of affirmative action in admissions, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has ordered that the academy identify books related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion themes in the school’s library and remove them from circulation.
Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies: The center’s director and associate director will be leaving their positions, according to two professors with direct knowledge of the moves. Faculty members who have spoken with both professors say each believes they were forced out of their posts.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZsS9LqSgwrU9AVdkGUL5P?si=b-Bph-dzRXCWn30mEtlYjA&nd=1&dlsi=62d9ef7dda5e4e24
New Podcast Episode
Princton’s President Responds To Attacks On Higher Education
Big Take
Tuesday: April 1, 2025
Podcast interview length: 39 minutes and 59 seconds
Episode Description
The Trump administration is targeting higher education. Colleges and universities across the United States are faced with the threat of funding freezes over their handling of free speech, anti-semitism and transgender issues, among other topics, on campus.
Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber joins host David Gura to discuss the newly announced freeze on some federal grants, the role of academic research, Princeton’s commitment to free speech and more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-student-detained.html
Targeting of Tufts Student for Deportation Stuns Friends and Teachers
The Trump administration said she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Her friends and lawyers say all she did was co-author an essay critical of the war in Gaza.
Listen to this article · 7:30 minutes
Targeting of Tufts Student for Deportation Stuns Friends and Teachers
The Trump administration said she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Her friends and lawyers say all she did was co-author an essay critical of the war in Gaza.
Listen to this article · 7:30 minutes
New York Times
On March 9, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, sent an anxious text message to Najiba Akbar, the university’s former Muslim chaplain, with whom she had become close.
“I recently learned that someone added all my information to a doxxing website called Canary Mission because of the op-ed published last March,” Ms. Ozturk wrote. She was trying to figure out what to do about it.
The website published her résumé and a picture of her in a red head scarf, and claimed that she had “engaged in anti-Israel activism.” It also linked to an opinion essay she had written with three other students in the Tufts student newspaper, critical of the university for not sanctioning Israel over the war in Gaza.
Ms. Ozturk had never struck the chaplain as the activist type, or the face of a movement. She was more of an introvert, the kind of person who liked to be helpful and would stay late after activities at the university’s Interfaith Center to help clean up.
So Ms. Akbar was shocked this week when she heard that the government had revoked Ms. Ozturk’s visa.
Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations had concluded that Ms. Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” according to a statement from homeland security.
At a news conference this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about her detention. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” he said, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”
Her friends and professors said that characterization did not square with what they knew of Ms. Ozturk. “It doesn’t really make sense, because she wasn’t a figure on campus,” Ms. Akbar said. “I don’t think she was active in banned groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. From what I know, she was doing her thing, doing her Ph.D.”
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010075008/tufts-student-ice-arrest.html?smid=url-share
Surveillance Footage Shows Arrest of Tufts University Student
VIDEO: 0:59
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen and a Muslim, was heading out to break her Ramadan fast with friends Tuesday night when she was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
Ms. Ozturk is one of many international students whom the government is seeking to deport after President Trump promised to combat antisemitism on campus and punish student protesters for misbehaving. Her detention suggests that the government is casting a wide net, finding not just prominent protesters who pushed limits and broke rules, but also apparently some who were more quietly involved.
The American Civil Liberties Union signed onto the case Friday and filed court papers demanding her release from custody, arguing that detaining her is a violation of her First Amendment rights, which extend to noncitizens on American soil.
“Rumeysa’s arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others,” the complaint said. Her lawyers filed the complaint in federal court in Boston, naming as defendants President Trump; Mr. Rubio; Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and immigration officials.
On Friday, a federal judge ruled that she could not be moved out of the country until the court rules again.
Ms. Ozturk has not been charged with any crime, and her friends are at a loss to understand how the law-abiding, introspective student they know matches the portrait of a political activist being presented by the government.
“She doesn’t drive, but if she were to drive she wouldn’t even have a parking ticket,” Reyyan Bilge, a psychology professor at Northeastern, said. “That’s the kind of person we’re talking about.”
Her friends also say that they had never seen any signs that Ms. Ozturk was antisemitic.
“This is not fighting antisemitism; it’s hurting your cause as well,” said Dr. Bilge, who taught Ms. Ozturk at Istanbul Sehir University in Turkey. Dr. Bilge wrote a recommendation for Ms. Ozturk for the Fulbright scholarship that brought her to the United States. She received her master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.
A surveillance camera captured Ms. Ozturk’s arrest on Tuesday evening. It has received millions of views and stirred widespread outrage on social media. The video shows federal agents in plainclothes and face masks surrounding her on the sidewalk. They take her phone and her backpack, handcuff her and hustle her into an unmarked car.
Ms. Ozturk was talking on her cellphone to her mother in Turkey when the ICE agents surrounded her, Dr. Bilge said, adding, “She told her mom to call her best friend” in Boston.
Her lawyer was not able to find her or to communicate with her for nearly 24 hours after she was detained, according to court papers. In the meantime, the documents say, she was without her asthma medication and suffered an asthma attack while en route to a detention center in Louisiana.
Another of her Turkish professors, Mehmet Fatih Uslu, recalled that her undergraduate thesis was impressive and reflected a sensitive nature. It focused on the representation of death in children’s literature.
“The idea that she would support any form of violence is utterly inconceivable,” he said. “Allegations linking her to Hamas are entirely unfounded and absurd.”
The group that cited her opinion essay, Canary Mission, says its goal is to document “individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.” But pro-Palestinian students say it has exposed their personal information online so they can be harassed. The group does not list employees or its funding sources on its website. Canary Mission said in a statement that it had not shared any information with the government.
ICE said in a statement that it was not working with tips from Canary Mission.
Friends said they did not really know how Ms. Ozturk came to co-write the essay. They suggested she might have been motivated by her interest in the welfare of children. She was studying child development. “She loves children,” Dr. Bilge said. “She cares deeply about children’s rights, women’s rights, animal rights — plant rights!”
The opinion essay says that “credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
It says the Tufts administration has been “wholly inadequate and dismissive of” demands that the university divest from Israel and acknowledge a genocide of Palestinians.
Ms. Akbar, the former chaplain, said Ms. Ozturk had been wanting to organize an event about how children are affected by violence, and how to support them through it. “I think she was inspired by Gaza, and wanted to broaden it out to Ukraine” and other countries, she said.
Dr. Bilge was having the Ramadan predawn meal with her family at around 5 a.m. when she found out about Ms. Ozturk’s detention. She recalled her phone being filled with messages of people reaching out to her, from both the United States and Turkey, asking if she had heard the news.
“Thinking ‘Rumeysa’ and ‘being detained’ within the same sentence, same paragraph, it was unbelievable,” she said.
Dr. Bilge said that before this week, she was not aware of the essay. But she said she would have fully supported it because the tone of the writing was “peaceful” and “grounded in the values of academic inquiry.”
She said that friends of hers abroad were already reconsidering whether to cancel trips for conferences in the United States. “Why would you go through that stress of thinking you could be detained at any point?” she said.
Ang Li contributed reporting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
On March 9, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, sent an anxious text message to Najiba Akbar, the university’s former Muslim chaplain, with whom she had become close.
“I recently learned that someone added all my information to a doxxing website called Canary Mission because of the op-ed published last March,” Ms. Ozturk wrote. She was trying to figure out what to do about it.
The website published her résumé and a picture of her in a red head scarf, and claimed that she had “engaged in anti-Israel activism.” It also linked to an opinion essay she had written with three other students in the Tufts student newspaper, critical of the university for not sanctioning Israel over the war in Gaza.
Ms. Ozturk had never struck the chaplain as the activist type, or the face of a movement. She was more of an introvert, the kind of person who liked to be helpful and would stay late after activities at the university’s Interfaith Center to help clean up.
So Ms. Akbar was shocked this week when she heard that the government had revoked Ms. Ozturk’s visa.
Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations had concluded that Ms. Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” according to a statement from homeland security.
At a news conference this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about her detention. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” he said, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”
Her friends and professors said that characterization did not square with what they knew of Ms. Ozturk. “It doesn’t really make sense, because she wasn’t a figure on campus,” Ms. Akbar said. “I don’t think she was active in banned groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. From what I know, she was doing her thing, doing her Ph.D.”
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010075008/tufts-student-ice-arrest.html?smid=url-share
Surveillance Footage Shows Arrest of Tufts University Student
VIDEO: 0:59
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen and a Muslim, was heading out to break her Ramadan fast with friends Tuesday night when she was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
Ms. Ozturk is one of many international students whom the government is seeking to deport after President Trump promised to combat antisemitism on campus and punish student protesters for misbehaving. Her detention suggests that the government is casting a wide net, finding not just prominent protesters who pushed limits and broke rules, but also apparently some who were more quietly involved.
The American Civil Liberties Union signed onto the case Friday and filed court papers demanding her release from custody, arguing that detaining her is a violation of her First Amendment rights, which extend to noncitizens on American soil.
“Rumeysa’s arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others,” the complaint said. Her lawyers filed the complaint in federal court in Boston, naming as defendants President Trump; Mr. Rubio; Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and immigration officials.
On Friday, a federal judge ruled that she could not be moved out of the country until the court rules again.
Ms. Ozturk has not been charged with any crime, and her friends are at a loss to understand how the law-abiding, introspective student they know matches the portrait of a political activist being presented by the government.
“She doesn’t drive, but if she were to drive she wouldn’t even have a parking ticket,” Reyyan Bilge, a psychology professor at Northeastern, said. “That’s the kind of person we’re talking about.”
Her friends also say that they had never seen any signs that Ms. Ozturk was antisemitic.
“This is not fighting antisemitism; it’s hurting your cause as well,” said Dr. Bilge, who taught Ms. Ozturk at Istanbul Sehir University in Turkey. Dr. Bilge wrote a recommendation for Ms. Ozturk for the Fulbright scholarship that brought her to the United States. She received her master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.
A surveillance camera captured Ms. Ozturk’s arrest on Tuesday evening. It has received millions of views and stirred widespread outrage on social media. The video shows federal agents in plainclothes and face masks surrounding her on the sidewalk. They take her phone and her backpack, handcuff her and hustle her into an unmarked car.
Ms. Ozturk was talking on her cellphone to her mother in Turkey when the ICE agents surrounded her, Dr. Bilge said, adding, “She told her mom to call her best friend” in Boston.
Her lawyer was not able to find her or to communicate with her for nearly 24 hours after she was detained, according to court papers. In the meantime, the documents say, she was without her asthma medication and suffered an asthma attack while en route to a detention center in Louisiana.
Another of her Turkish professors, Mehmet Fatih Uslu, recalled that her undergraduate thesis was impressive and reflected a sensitive nature. It focused on the representation of death in children’s literature.
“The idea that she would support any form of violence is utterly inconceivable,” he said. “Allegations linking her to Hamas are entirely unfounded and absurd.”
The group that cited her opinion essay, Canary Mission, says its goal is to document “individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.” But pro-Palestinian students say it has exposed their personal information online so they can be harassed. The group does not list employees or its funding sources on its website. Canary Mission said in a statement that it had not shared any information with the government.
ICE said in a statement that it was not working with tips from Canary Mission.
Friends said they did not really know how Ms. Ozturk came to co-write the essay. They suggested she might have been motivated by her interest in the welfare of children. She was studying child development. “She loves children,” Dr. Bilge said. “She cares deeply about children’s rights, women’s rights, animal rights — plant rights!”
The opinion essay says that “credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
It says the Tufts administration has been “wholly inadequate and dismissive of” demands that the university divest from Israel and acknowledge a genocide of Palestinians.
Ms. Akbar, the former chaplain, said Ms. Ozturk had been wanting to organize an event about how children are affected by violence, and how to support them through it. “I think she was inspired by Gaza, and wanted to broaden it out to Ukraine” and other countries, she said.
Dr. Bilge was having the Ramadan predawn meal with her family at around 5 a.m. when she found out about Ms. Ozturk’s detention. She recalled her phone being filled with messages of people reaching out to her, from both the United States and Turkey, asking if she had heard the news.
“Thinking ‘Rumeysa’ and ‘being detained’ within the same sentence, same paragraph, it was unbelievable,” she said.
Dr. Bilge said that before this week, she was not aware of the essay. But she said she would have fully supported it because the tone of the writing was “peaceful” and “grounded in the values of academic inquiry.”
She said that friends of hers abroad were already reconsidering whether to cancel trips for conferences in the United States. “Why would you go through that stress of thinking you could be detained at any point?” she said.
Ang Li contributed reporting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
More about Anemona Hartocollis
A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2025, Section A, Page 26 of the New York edition with the headline: Quiet Tufts Student Is Ensnared in Visa Campaign. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |
See more on: The Israel Hamas War, American Civil Liberties Union, Tufts University, State Department, Marco Rubio
A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2025, Section A, Page 26 of the New York edition with the headline: Quiet Tufts Student Is Ensnared in Visa Campaign. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |
See more on: The Israel Hamas War, American Civil Liberties Union, Tufts University, State Department, Marco Rubio
