Why I Am Not Going Anywhere

Universities are under attack in the United States. Here's why I'm staying.

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has previously written about the Trump administration’s unprecedented assault on higher education — and the scattershot response from university leadership.

In those columns, the focus was either on the policies being pursued more generally or the targeting of Columbia University in particular. Last night, these attacks hit much closer to my home institution of Tufts University, according to Tufts Daily’s Samantha Eng:

Federal authorities detained a Tufts graduate student last night outside an off-campus apartment in Somerville, University President Sunil Kumar announced in an email around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night. Kumar wrote that the university is seeking more information about the cause and circumstances of the arrest.

The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, is a Turkish national and doctoral candidate in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. Ozturk is a teaching fellow, works as a doctoral research assistant at Tufts’ Children’s Television Project and completed a master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, as a Fulbright Scholar.

Ozturk’s attorney filed a petition in the Massachusetts federal court for her to appear before court.

“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University,” Kumar wrote in an email to the Tufts community….

Tufts administration was told that Ozturk’s visa has been terminated, but the university has yet to confirm whether that is accurate and is attempting to learn more about the incident.

You can also read a similar write-up at the Boston Globe.

There is video of Ozturk’s detainment on the street courtesy of WCVB. I would suggest listening to the first half with the sound on:

Eng’s story mentions that Ozturk was doxxed: “In March 2024, Ozturk coauthored an op-ed in the Daily, calling on Kumar to endorse Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions for the university to recognize genocide in Gaza and divest from Israeli corporations. Canary Mission, a website with the stated purpose to ‘document people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,’ cited the article as ‘anti-Israel activism.’”

The New York Times’ Jenna Russell and Safak Timur report that late yesterday Federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani ordered that Ms. Ozturk not be moved out of the state without advance written notice to the court from the government. They also had this quote:

With the caveat that the basis for Ms. Ozturk’s detention was not known, Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, said that trying to deport students based on their speech or activism undermines America’s commitment to free expression.

“If ICE detained Ozturk based on her op-ed or activism, it’s a worrying escalation in an already fraught environment for college students here on student visas,” Mr. Coward said in a statement.

DHS released a statement claiming that “Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” If that op-ed is their sole evidentiary support for such a claim then they’re going to have a hard time proving it — “Hamas” is not mentioned once in the essay.

Needless to say, emotions are running high in Medford. Students, faculty, staff and the university administration are experiencing varying amounts of fear and anger. That this action is allegedly being done under the banner of combatting anti-Semitism is particularly appalling. As the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell points out, the Trump administration’s motives and actions are suspect at best and abhorrent at worst:

It takes a lot of chutzpah to claim to be combating antisemitism while coddling avowed antisemites. Multiple senior Trump aides have embraced the antisemitic “great replacement theory” and delivered Nazi salutes (or rather, harmless waves that so closely resemble Nazi salutes that even self-proclaimed Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes called them “excessive”). Administration officials have also lately canoodled with Germany’s Holocaust-downplaying far-right party, with Elon Musk urging Germans to get over their country’s “past guilt” already….

As Jews and other historically persecuted groups have learned, the best protection against oppression and violence is a commitment to a free society that respects civil rights, rule of law and due process….

Absence of due process is how you get lynchings, pogroms and other state-sanctioned violence. (Not to mention serious government mistakes, such as confusing a makeup artist for a hardened gangster, as has apparently happened to one of the Venezuelan asylum seekers Trump sent to El Salvador.)

Chillingly, the administration has also reveled in the public humiliation of disfavored groups….

These state actions should disturb any American but particularly those of us from groups that have been targeted for oppression in the past and that fear rising (bipartisan) bigotry today. The way to keep Jews — and any other people — safe is to champion freedom and dignity for all.

Unsurprisingly, these recent actions are spurring some academics to flee the United States. Daily Nous reports that philosopher Jason Stanley has moved from Yale to the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

In an email, he writes that “the decision was entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” He had had an offer from Toronto, and decided to accept it last Friday night after Columbia’s capitulation to the Trump administration’s demands.

He notes that he will be joining others who left Yale for the Munk School, such historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore.

Stanley writes that he has been “very happy at Yale, with the department and the university,” but that he wants “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.”

I can’t say that I completely blame Snyder or Stanley or anyone else who is considering leaving the United States right now. I’m not sure we can be coded as a liberal democracy right now, and the folks who know an awful lot about regime type seem pretty comfortable currently labelling the U.S. as a “competitive authoritarian state.” At Tufts, the threat is no longer theoretical, but all too real.

That said, I’m not going anywhere.¹ This is for two pretty big reasons.

The first is that, in yet another stunning display of my strategic acumen, as of July 1st of this year I will be the Academic Dean of the Fletcher School.² Why did I accept this position. Some possibilities:

1. I thought it would be a really good time to enter academic administration;

2. I am serving penance for past Drezner’s World columns; or

3. I want to protect the good works that Fletcher faculty and students generate on a daily basis.

The other reason is that even though these are scary times, I occupy a pretty privileged position. I’m an American citizen and a full professor. This affords me the opportunity to produce scholarly research and policy essays that attempt to speak truth to power in a way that my international colleagues and students are finding difficult right now. If my assessment is that the Trump administration is really goddamn stupid, I can still say that as plainly as possible. And I will continue to do so until and unless the administration decides that it can detain U.S. citizens as lawlessly as it has foreign nationals.

I refuse to give up on the United States. The Trump administration’s actions are not as popular as many seem to think they are. There will eventually be a reckoning. And to facilitate that outcome, I choose to use voice instead of exit.

1. Okay, technically that’s not entirely true. I’m typing this at Logan as I head overseas for a talk. But I’m coming back, and CBP has to let me back in! I’m not moving out of the country — that’s the point.

2. NOTE: This is not the same thing as being the Dean — that job is ably occupied! The Academic Dean is a pretty important position, but I’m not going to be the boss.