On Jan. 29, President Trump issued Executive Order 14188, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” in which he declared, “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
The antisemitism he names is specifically related to protests “in our schools and on our campuses” against Israel’s depraved conduct in the Gaza Strip between October 2023 and January 2025. This effort reaches back in time to include incidents of alleged antisemitism on college campuses reported since Oct. 7, 2023.
Trump instructed the federal government to “familiariz[e] institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) [the U.S. Code section on ‘inadmissible aliens’], so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”
He also stated directly, “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”
The Trump administration is weaponizing the structures of colleges and universities to identify and punish vocal opponents of genocide. That weaponization is being cloaked in the language of combating antisemitism, but it is really about silencing dissent and establishing control over the subversive intellectuals that Trump, like all fascists, despises.
This is nothing new. Trump and his republican allies have made their disdain for higher education exceedingly clear, both on the campaign trail and in their legislative action. In 2023, Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis staged what can only be described as an administrative coup at New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution in Sarasota. As part of a “war on woke,” DeSantis replaced the college’s board with his political allies, who went on to limit core curriculum to exclude sociology and anthropology, and abolish both the school’s gender studies program and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
President Trump has also promised to overhaul the accreditation system, which oversees American higher education to ensure colleges and universities meet industry standards. His plan is to fire “radical left accreditors” and replace them with those committed to “defending the American tradition and western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats.” In short, Trump wants to forcibly shift American universities to the ideological right.
EO 14188 is a significant step in that direction. Trump intends to create a loophole in the American immigration code, which would authorize the deportation of any noncitizen who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” By painting all student protestors as supporters of Hamas — which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization — the president can legalize the suppression of free speech rights allocated by the First Amendment and open the door to more repressive moves in the future.
Trump’s effort comes mere months after the House of Representatives passed HR 9495, which, if approved by the Senate, would allow the Department of the Treasury to remove tax-exempt status from non-profits that it deems, under loosely defined criteria, to have supported a terrorist organization. This means that any non-profit newspaper or magazine that has published pieces calling Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide — a word that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch now use to describe Israel’s actions — could be stripped of its tax-exempt status. A U.S.-based charity that provided humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians during the 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip could be accused of materially supporting Hamas and be strong-armed into submission by the federal government. It is not difficult to imagine the many absurd and unconstitutional situations that HR 9495 is designed to bring about.
Trump’s threats to deport noncitizen students protesting in support of Palestine are particularly callous, and should be of immediate concern to Oberlin’s community. Now is the time for the school’s administration to turn its promises into action. In August 2024, when the College denied a request to divest from companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza, the Board of Trustees contradicted its commitment to open and honest dialogue. The Board refused to “tak[e] a clear institutional stand on one side of a fraught and contested issue that divides the Oberlin community” because “doing so could constrain critical thinking, discourse, and debate on the subject, which could jeopardize the College’s mission.”
I can think of no greater threat to the mission of Oberlin College than its students being deported for expressing their views on world events. In line with its stated liberal arts mission, Oberlin should not comply with Trump’s executive order. In fact, if the College is pressured to report students to immigration authorities for taking part in campus protests, it should do everything in its power to protect its academic integrity, including mounting a legal challenge against the order’s constitutionality.
Regarding virtually all aspects of the Trump administration’s agenda, community resilience will prove indispensable in combating the misuse of power. We should be united against the deportation of our classmates and peers, even if we disagree with them politically. These are clearly unprecedented times, and attacks on academic freedom are being launched faster than many of us can keep up with. But this order is worth paying attention to. Punishing students for raising their voices against senseless war might well be the first step in a surprisingly short process to revoke our constitutional rights. Do not let Trump’s administration get away with it.
