Axios: Trump May End Foreign Student Visas At Pro-Hamas Colleges

Want to get Academia’s attention? A president has three options, all within his executive authority:

1. Cut off grants and other federal research monies
2. Aggressive use of Title VI, VII, and IX investigations to ensure proper compliance
3. Sever income streams from abroad via visa management

You could add “tax endowments” to that list, but that would require Congress to act. As Donald Trump is demonstrating, a president can use the three steps above to make universities and colleges know he’s serious about cleaning up campus unrest, especially that fomented by terrorist organizations abroad. According to Axios’ Marc Caputo, Trump has already begun planning Step 3:

The Trump administration is discussing plans to try to block certain colleges from having any foreign students if it decides too many are “pro-Hamas,” senior Justice and State Department officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: The effort — which could include grand jury subpoenas —marks another escalation of Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and antisemitism that civil libertarians say stifles campus speech and has led to several lawsuits. …

At the heart of the plan is the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which certifies schools to accept student visa-holders. Institutions have been decertified in the past if the government determines they have too many student-visa holders who are using the education system as a ruse to live and work in the U.S., officials say.

• Now, the Trump administration is threatening to apply that decertification framework to the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations on college campuses.

Right now, the administration is arresting individuals who have violated the terms of their visas. That process will take a while, even with the Secretary of State’s near-plenary power to revoke such visas and order deportation. The White House has decided that it’s better to put an end to the problem at the front of the process rather than having to clean up afterward. 

As Caputo notes, the executive branch already has that authority. Should they? Perhaps that’s a question that Congress should have considered when passing the statutes that undergird the authority. Congress has had a nasty habit of punting its authority to the executive branch lately, and by lately, I mean for the last century or so. But in this particular case, border control and visa management would likely be the sole province of the executive branch, statutes or no. 

That will be a huge problem for universities and colleges, particularly the most expensive. Those schools tend to get discounted tuitions and/or scholarship and grant money from domestic enrollees, but foreign students usually pay their full freight. Ivy League and other ‘top echelon’ institutions recruit foreign students heavily for that reason. Cutting off the flow of foreign students will put a major dent in the financial models for these schools — a point that the White House clearly understands. 

And apparently, these schools need to have the message beaten over their heads. After Trump cut off $430 million in federal funding to Columbia to force them to clean up their act, president Katrina Armstrong publicly declared that the school would comply with the terms for reinstatement. Privately, Armstrong told Columbia faculty a much different story, as Eliana Johnson reports at the Free Beacon:

Nothing to see here.

That’s what Columbia University president Katrina Armstrong told approximately 75 faculty members who assembled on a Saturday morning Zoom call to hear from her about a letter sent by the school to the Trump administration on Friday outlining a series of steps Columbia says it is taking to address “legitimate concerns raised both from within and without our Columbia community, including by our regulators” about the eruption of anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.

Throughout the conversation, which lasted approximately 75 minutes and included Columbia provost Angela Olinto and general counsel Felice Rosan, Armstrong and Olinto downplayed or denied that change was underway, particularly when it came to meeting the Trump administration’s demand to put the school’s Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership.

“This is not a receivership,” Olinto told the group. “The provost will not be writing or controlling anything. It’s the faculty,” she continued, adding, “Your department is totally independent.”

Step One didn’t get the point across. Step Two doesn’t appear to worry Columbia and its ethnic-studies establishment. What happens when Step Three arrives — and the students for those disciplines don’t arrive? ‘Receivership’ may make way for ‘bankruptcy,’ at least in those departments. 

By the way, the Trump administration didn’t find Armstrong’s remarks on Friday amusing. By Tuesday, Armstrong started singing from the same page in the hymnal as the White House … again:

Armstrong released a statement emphasizing her support for the changes after holding weekend meetings with anxious faculty about the deal the school made in government talks over federal funding. Some faculty said they were concerned that Armstrong was playing down the changes, and presenting mixed messages. 

“I regret any confusion and inconsistent statements and want to make sure our position is clear as we go forward,” Armstrong said in a statement Tuesday. “Let there be no confusion: I commit to seeing these changes implemented, with the full support of Columbia’s senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees.”

Armstrong put out the statement after the Trump administration asked the school to clarify its commitment to the deal it made Friday with the government, according to people familiar with the matter. The agreement included restricting masks, empowering campus police and appointing a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies.

That exchange may have prompted the discussions at the White House. It certainly looked like Armstrong was trying to head-fake Trump on the agreement, or head-fake her faculty. The best way to deal with that would be to cut off all foreign tuition income to Columbia until full compliance is achieved — and to all other schools that let terrorist-supporting activists conduct intimidation campaigns against students and faculty. In fact, that just sounds like a good policy overall.