In recent weeks, the nation has witnessed the Trump administration revoke visas and green cards from international students under the guise of protecting U.S. foreign policy and national security, with the intention of deporting them. The reasons, sometimes cited, sometimes not, included unsupported accusations that these students had engaged in antisemitic activity during Gaza war campus protests last spring. The first student, Palestinian Columbia University graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, was abducted by ICE agents on March 8. Other students and instructors detained by ICE include Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, Yunseo Chung and Ranjani Srinivasan of Columbia, Alireza Doroudi of the University of Alabama, Dr. Rasha Alawieh of Brown University, Momodou Taal of Cornell and professor Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown University. Some deportations have been temporarily halted by federal judges.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that he’d signed more than 300 letters revoking the visas of students, visitors and others to force their expulsion from the United States because of their foreign policy views. Many believe the Trump regime’s suppression of free speech, weaponizing the issue of Israel’s bloody war in Gaza that’s killed now more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians and conflating any criticism of Israel with antisemitism is designed to intimidate students and universities into silencing all dissenting views. Trump has used the threat to withhold millions of dollars in federal funds as a method to force universities to submit to the administration’s repressive demands, a path followed by Columbia.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Here, Hashemi, who served as the now detained post-doctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri’s academic supervisor, talks about what he says are false charges ICE has lodged against Khan Suri and his concern that university administrators are surrendering to Trump regime demands stemming from their failure to unify in resisting the government’s targeting of free speech on campus.
NADER HASHEMI: Almost exactly two weeks ago, around 8:00 in the evening, federal agents showed up at Badar Khan Suri’s home close to Georgetown in Arlington, Virginia. He’s a postdoctoral fellow. He’s an Indian national. He works on sort of peace-building themes, reconstruction. But specifically, he is teaching a course for us right now at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown on the question of minority rights and majoritarianism in his native India. He’s married to a Palestinian from Gaza. And his father-in-law, 10 years ago, was an adviser to the Palestinian prime minister who was from Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by the Israelis in Tehran over the summer.
It seems like he was arrested because he was, so to speak, low-hanging fruit. He is on a visa. His wife is an American citizen. I think his wife was very much the target. But I think the bigger target here that ties the case of Badar Khan Suri with all of the other cases that you’ve mentioned on other university campuses, is really an attempt by the Trump administration to spread fear and to intimidate students who, roughly a year ago rose up in one of the great social protest movements in modern American history to oppose the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza.
And so he was arrested. Now he’s in a detention facility, the last we heard, in Texas. He’s done absolutely nothing wrong. He hasn’t broken any laws. The interesting thing about his case, in contrast to Mahmoud Khalil case at Columbia, which is better known, is that my colleague Badar Khan Suri was not a political activist, an organizer, or even a public intellectual.
He just kept his head down, did his work. Focused on his teaching. But he was targeted, I think, because he was easy to target, because they couldn’t get his wife, who I said is an American citizen. But also part of this broader campaign to spread fear and intimidation throughout university campuses to stop speaking out on Gaza. And it seems to be working because, you know, the reports that we’re having right now on campuses is that a lot of students, especially international students, are living in fear. They don’t know if they’re going to be next. That’s the broad picture.
I would add also that students who actually have done absolutely nothing, haven’t even participated in one protest, there is the case of this, a student at the University of Alabama. A young man by the name of Alireza Doroudi. He was a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering.
It’s unclear why he was arrested. He wasn’t known to have participated in any protests, but it seems like the only reason why he was arrested was because he holds an Iranian passport. From the perspective of the Trump administration, that’s good enough for you to get picked up and thrown into an ICE detention facility today.
SCOTT HARRIS: Dr. Hashemi, what’s been the response of the university, the students, the faculty and the administrators to what happened at Georgetown with Khan Suri?
NADER HASHEMI: Well, a lot of outrage, anger. There was an immediate attempt to mobilize to provide support to the family. We had a protest last week. More protests are planned.
The university, I think, privately has been supportive. Publicly, they’re very cautious like other universities that have been targeted. They are trying to sort of play it very cautiously because they don’t want to be the next Columbia.
News just broke. Harvard has been subjected to the same type of Columbia- like treatment. Over the weekend, the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard had its senior administrative staff, you know, really good scholars, people who do good work. They were suddenly fired from their jobs. Accusations of antisemitism were made against them. So universities, including mine, are trying to play it carefully because they don’t want to be targeted.
And I think this is part of the problem because, you know, one by one, these universities can be plucked off. But if there was some sort of united stand among most universities and colleges, and there was a willingness to stand up for, you know, the independence and the integrity of the American university system, then I think there would be a fighting chance to push back.
And I think this is precisely why, you know, Trump is targeting our universities, because our universities are independent. They’re places where people can think critically, where they can mobilize, where they can hold power accountable. And every authoritarian regime that tries to come to power targets those independent institutions that can hold them or try to hold government officials accountable.
So it’s not a, you know, fluke that universities are being targeted in this way. This is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Anyone who studies authoritarian transitions can see what happened in Viktor Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey or, you know, Putin’s Russia happening right now in the United States. This is not a passing phenomenon. This is a major transition toward authoritarianism.
And it really requires everyone to sort of stand up, organize and try and fight back. Because if we don’t, we’re going to find ourselves living in a very dark, authoritarian regime very soon.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Nader Hashemi (18:31) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page. For weekly updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook now underway, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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