Trump and academia

In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump would often complain about how some of America’s top universities were playing a leading role in pro-Palestine and pro-Gaza protests across campuses in America.

This was in 2024 and places like Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley and several other elite universities were at the forefront of such protests.

And now in 2025, we have seen what has happened since Trump took office as president a second time. Every day brings a series of executive orders, and several have recently impacted some of America’s top US universities.

The hardest hit so far has been Columbia (my alma mater and where I spent some of my most formative years, intellectually speaking, as an undergraduate student) which has seen a suspension of $400 million in funding from the US government. Others include Johns Hopkins which has been a powerhouse in particular in medical research, and there the US government has cut $200 million in funding.

Most of this funding is for research. The US has traditionally led the way with groundbreaking scientific research conducted at its top universities. This research has in turn benefitted not just America and its citizens and its economy but has had a wider impact across the world since it has been a catalyst for technological advancement whose influence has often been felt across generations.

Columbia has also been sent a letter by the US government making several demands of it, including one which seeks that its departments of South Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and African Studies be taken from the university’s control for five years, and their heads be nominees of the federal government so that their recruitment of faculty and admission of students, in particular graduate students, could be controlled. Quite frankly, making such a demand of one of the top universities of the world, by a government that says it’s the leader of the free world, is alarming and a bit difficult to digest.

In addition to this, the US Department of Education has written to 60 of the country’s top universities and colleges asking them to abide by their legal obligation to ensure the safety and security of their Jewish students. And President Trump has also been quoted as saying that this is just the beginning for academia as far as his administration’s efforts on such issues are concerned.

Related to academia is also the US State Department’s announcement that it will track and monitor foreign students in the US and if found violating the terms of their visas or US law, they could be deported back to their home countries and their student visas could be revoked.

And one instance of this has already happened with an assistant professor and doctor at Brown University (a member of the prestigious Ivy League) who was denied entry into the US despite having a valid H1-B visa. In an affidavit filed before a US federal court, US immigration said that the doctor’s phone was examined and found to contain material that suggested that she was a supporter and sympathiser of Hamas. The affidavit also said she had pictures of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and had attended Hamas chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon.

The filing seemed to suggest that she was denied entry into the US, her H1-B visa was cancelled and she was banned from entering for five years based on these findings.

Understandably, such cases have caused much consternation and trepidation among foreign students in the US. And this is all having a major impact on Pakistan as well, in particular on the over 11, 000 Pakistanis studying at American colleges and universities. Social media is awash with debates and discussions where apprehensions and fears of the students are aired.

One particularly frequent topic of discussion these days is students asking for advice on whether it’s okay for them to leave the US in the upcoming summer holidays and what would happen if they were to return — and they all obviously have valid student visas.

It should be borne in mind that this is just the beginning of Trump’s second term — his first 100 days are not even over. And he has already been quoted as saying that this is just the beginning as far as the universities that he perceives as being pro-Palestine and anti-Israel are concerned.

Of course, there is also the alternate view that such actions and policies may not be sustainable and will inevitably lead to pushback from Americans themselves. Right now, foreign students in the US or foreigners seeking to visit are the focus of these policies. But sooner or later, their repercussions will begin affecting Americans and then it will be left to see how they respond and react, and how the US government reacts — and whether the pushback has any effect on such policies.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts @omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishi@gmail.com