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Screening of Student Visa Applicants' Social Media Denounced as Attack on Free Speech
One First Amendment expert warned the new Trump administration policy will "inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States."
Jun 19, 2025
International students will once again be able to apply for U.S. visas following a cable sent Wednesday from the U.S. State Department to embassies and consulates—but not without being subjected to what one political scientist denounced "ideological purity tests" imposed by the Trump administration.
Nearly a month after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency was pausing all student visa interviews amid the Trump administration's sweeping push to rid American universities of foreign students who have publicly supported Palestinian rights—as well as Chinese students and those accused of having ties to the Chinese Communist Party—the State Department said applications will once again be accepted, but scholars' social media use will be rigorously reviewed for signs of "hostility" toward the United States.
Applicants for F academic visas, M visas for vocational students, and J visas for educational and cultural exchanges will be required at their visa interviews to make all of their social media accounts accessible to consular officers who conduct their interviews, so officers can search for "any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States."
Both new and returning student visas applicants will be subject to the new screenings, and consular officers were instructed in the cable to take "detailed case notes" about students' online presence.
"Take screenshots to preserve the record against possible later alteration or loss of the information," read the cable.
"This new State Department policy is a digital-age version of a policy that history has already discredited."
Students who are found to "demonstrate a history of political activism" will be flagged under the new social media guidelines, and consular officers are being directed to "consider the likelihood they would continue such activity in the United States."
Sarah Spreitzer, vice president of the American Council on Education, told The New York Times that the organization is "very worried that this is going to be some political litmus test that's going to be applied to students."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy will "inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States."
"This policy makes a censor of every consular officer," added Jaffer.
The new screening procedures followed the Trump administration's detention of and efforts to deport several foreign students who publicly expressed support for Palestinian rights, including Columbia University organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts University student and op-ed author Rümeysa Öztürk, and Georgetown University academic Badar Khan Suri. The latter three scholars have been released from detention in recent weeks after court rulings, but Khalil remains imprisoned in Louisiana. A judge in New Jersey determined last month that his detention is "likely" unconstitutional and ruled last week that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport Khalil, who has not been charged with a crime, but he has yet to be released.
The State Department cable instructed embassies and consulates to flag any social media activity that displayed "advocacy for, aid, or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security" and "support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence."
The communication did not detail how officials should determine what online comments or activity would qualify. Trump administration officials have openly conflated students' involvement in protests against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Palestinians in Gaza with antisemitic, pro-terrorist activity.
The cable also contained a threat to student visa applicants if portions of their social media accounts remain "set to private" during their interviews.
In those cases, the directive says, "you should treat the case as any other where an applicant fails to provide certain information on request."
A bolded sentence added, "You must consider whether such failure reflects evasiveness or otherwise calls into question the applicant's credibility."
Jaffer noted that "some of the 20th century's most significant artistic and intellectual figures, including Pablo Neruda, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Graham Greene," were barred from entering the U.S. due to their ties to the Communist Party, after "ideological vetting" by U.S. officials.
"This new State Department policy," said Jaffer, "is a digital-age version of a policy that history has already discredited."
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Students Like Grace Pay the Price If Trump Dismantles the Education Department
Stripping federal oversight will abandon the students who need it most.
Mar 13, 2025
For decades, the federal government has played a crucial role in ensuring that every child—regardless of disability, income, or background—has access to a quality education. That role isn’t just administrative; it’s a safeguard against discrimination, neglect, and the systemic failures that have historically left the most vulnerable students behind. Now, with the recent push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, that safeguard is under attack.
As an education attorney, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when schools fail to meet their legal obligations—and who suffers most when oversight disappears. No group stands to lose more than the 7.3 million children with disabilities who depend on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for basic educational access. Without federal enforcement, that right isn’t just at risk—it could vanish overnight.
And the harm won’t stop there. Weakening the Department of Education means weakening the very mechanisms designed to prevent discrimination and protect students from systemic inequities. It means fewer safeguards, fewer resources, and fewer options for the millions of students who already face the greatest barriers to educational opportunity. The brunt of these cuts will fall hardest on Black and brown students, students with disabilities, English learners, LGBTQIA+ students, and low-income families—communities that have long relied on federal oversight as a necessary check against discrimination and neglect.
Without federal enforcement of the IDEA’s key provisions, Grace’s school district may well elect to discontinue her therapy sessions with impunity, leaving her unable to make progress much like her typically achieving peers.
The numbers tell the story. In Fiscal Year 2024, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) received a record-breaking 22,687 complaints—an 18% increase from the previous high of 19,201 complaints in FY 2023. The vast majority, year after year, involve allegations of disability discrimination. If anything, this surge in complaints underscores the urgent need for stronger civil rights enforcement in schools—not a retreat from it. Stripping away the department’s oversight would not only silence these complaints, but leave the most vulnerable students with nowhere to turn.
Consider Grace (a pseudonym), a bright, eight-year-old girl living in a small Massachusetts farming town. Born with cerebral palsy, Grace depends on physical therapy to navigate her school environment, and occupational therapy to master everyday tasks, like writing and eating independently. Through the provisions set forth in the IDEA, Grace’s family secured access to these vital services at her local public school—services they, like most families, would otherwise be unable to afford out of pocket.
Without federal enforcement of the IDEA’s key provisions, Grace’s school district may well elect to discontinue her therapy sessions with impunity, leaving her unable to make progress much like her typically achieving peers. Her parents, already stretched thin, would have no recourse. For Grace, and for millions of families across the country, what’s at stake isn’t just a matter of policy—it’s the ability to build a future on fair and equal ground for all.
The Lessons of History: Why Federal Oversight Matters
To grasp the significance of the U.S. Department of Education, we need only look to the past. Its oversight, enforcement, and technical assistance functions are not bureaucratic formalities—they are the guardrails that ensure students’ rights are more than just words on paper. Well before the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students with disabilities faced not only educational exclusion, but also deep-seated social marginalization.
As I’ve written elsewhere, throughout the 19th century, children with disabilities were largely seen as a private concern—a “private trouble” rather than a public responsibility. But as the early 20th century ushered in compulsory school attendance laws, this exclusionary paradigm began to shift. For the first time, children who had long been dismissed as “seemingly uneducable” were legally required to enroll in public schools, disrupting the longstanding pattern of social and educational isolation.
Yet, attendance did not guarantee access to meaningful education. From the 1950s through the early 1970s, the neglect and ableist hostility that had defined the prior century took on new forms within the nation’s public schools. Rather than providing necessary supports, many schools systematically segregated students with disabilities into poorly resourced and stigmatized classrooms.
The White House Committee on Special Classes condemned these environments as little more than dumping grounds for students with specialized needs. In response, parents and community advocates “lobbied aggressively to root out [the] entrenched discrimination” pervading public schools. Still, by the 1971-72 school year—just three years before IDEA’s passage—the scale of educational exclusion remained staggering: Seven states were educating fewer than 20% of their known children with disabilities, and in 19 states, fewer than a third. Only 17 states had even reached the halfway mark.
Without federal protections guaranteeing a right to education, disability rights activists fought to bring students with disabilities into standard educational environments. Drawing inspiration from Brown v. Board of Education, they argued that segregated special education classrooms, much like racially segregated schools, resulted in unequal and inferior educational experiences. Their efforts helped lay the groundwork for constitutional protections that, particularly at the district court level, affirmed the right of students with disabilities to receive a public education.
This federal intervention wasn’t about bureaucracy—it was about necessity. And yet, today, some lawmakers are pushing to strip away the very enforcement and oversight protections that helped bring an end to that era of exclusion and ableism.
The Bipartisan Stakes of Dismantling the Department of Education
Disability knows no boundaries. It cuts across race, class, geography, and political affiliation. It is an equalizer in its unpredictability, shaping lives in urban centers, suburban neighborhoods, and rural farming towns alike. Yet in the very communities where support for President Donald Trump was strongest, families may not realize how deeply this proposal could undermine their children’s futures.
Rural schools already operate under immense strain—stretched budgets, fewer specialized teachers, and the challenges of geographic isolation. For students with disabilities, these hurdles are even higher. Federal funding under the IDEA is a lifeline, covering nearly 15% of special education costs nationwide, amounting to billions in critical federal aid.
Dismantling the Department of Education isn’t just a bureaucratic maneuver—it’s a fundamental betrayal of the promise that every child deserves a fair chance at an education.
States like Nebraska, Indiana, and South Dakota—all of which invest disproportionately less in their rural school districts—depend on these federal dollars to meet even the most basic obligations to students like Grace. Yet in Nebraska, where the funding gap between rural and urban schools is widest, Trump won approximately 60% of the vote in the last presidential election.
For many rural families, these stakes aren’t theoretical. Losing federal protections could mean losing access to the nearest specialist—often hours away—or having nowhere at all to turn when their child needs critical services.
Block Grants: A Recipe for Inequity
As the push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education gains momentum, leaders in Republican-led states are renewing calls to shift federal education funding to block grants—a move that would only deepen the crisis. While touted as a way to give states more flexibility, block grants come with fewer guardrails, making it easier for states to divert funds away from the students who need them most.
If enacted, this shift would further weaken federal oversight, making it far more difficult to enforce “maintenance of effort” (MOE) provisions, which ensure states uphold their own education spending. In a more decentralized system, the risk isn’t just mismanagement—it’s an abdication of responsibility, leaving vulnerable students at the mercy of shifting political priorities and budget shortfalls.
Consider Medicaid block grants as an analog and cautionary tale. States that received Medicaid waivers under block grant-style flexibility often shifted funds away from vulnerable populations to cover budget deficits. For example, in Tennessee, the state redirected Medicaid dollars meant for underserved communities to plug holes in unrelated health system budgets. Without federal oversight, similar reallocations of special education funding are not only possible, but likely.
Without these safeguards, history could repeat itself—not as a distant memory, but as a lived reality for millions of students. The lack of federal accountability would make it nearly impossible for families to challenge these decisions, leaving rural families, already underserved, at an even greater disadvantage.
A Call to Action: Protecting the Future for All Children
Dismantling the Department of Education isn’t just a bureaucratic maneuver—it’s a fundamental betrayal of the promise that every child deserves a fair chance at an education. The impact won’t be abstract. It will be felt in classrooms and kitchen-table conversations, in the quiet struggles of families left without recourse, and in the futures of children who will be denied the support they need to thrive.
This isn’t about politics; it’s about priorities. Federal oversight exists because history has shown what happens when states are left to decide, on their own, whose education matters. Without these protections, vulnerable students will once again be pushed to the margins, their futures dictated not by potential but by geography, circumstance, and political whim.
The question before us is simple: Do we honor our commitment to all children, or do we turn back the clock on decades of progress? For Grace, for her classmates, and for the generations to come, the answer must be clear. We must act—not out of partisanship, but out of principle. The future of our children, and of our country, depends on it.
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Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Brings Us to the Edge of a Dystopian Future
Trump decided to up the ante against young activists with this action against Khalil, hoping it gets wide publicity to cow any other students who may consider protesting any policies of his.
Mar 12, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and his police-state goons are trying to frighten people who dare even come close to people protesting his or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. This is how dictators intimidate citizens, how freedom dies, and is a clear violation of our Constitution.
And, in all probability, this is just the beginning of what historians will someday define as a very ugly episode in American history.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian green card-holder who graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a master’s degree and is married to an American who’s now eight-months pregnant, was seized from his New York residence over the weekend and transported to a barbarous detention facility in Louisiana.
Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?
He had previously worked for the British Embassy in Beirut, where he’d earned his undergraduate degree in computer science at the Lebanese American University. A legal permanent resident of the United States, he has not been accused of breaking any law.
The day before his seizure, he’d appealed directly to Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia University, according to reporting at Zeteo, writing on March 7, the day before he was snatched away from his family and transported over a thousand miles away:
Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.
Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.
I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—which applies to every “person” in the United States, not just U.S. citizens—is unambiguous:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis added)
As Ann Coulter—yes, that Ann Coulter—wrote on Xitter:
There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?
Speaking of that, first President George Washington noted:
If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.
Benjamin Franklin was equally explicit:
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
But Donald Trump was having none of it; speech with which he disagrees is to be brutally punished:
“ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas student on the campus of Columbia University,” the president bragged on his Nazi-infested social media site. “This is the first arrest of many to come.”
Khalil’s “crime” appears to have been his taking on the role of a high-profile negotiator between protesting students and the university, trying to achieve a peaceful resolution of the anti-Gaza-bombing students’ complaints.
As The New York Times reported:
Mr. Khalil’s arrest drew outrage from students and faculty at the university. Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia, described him as brave, yet mild-mannered and gentle—a “consummate diplomat” who worked to find middle ground between protesters and school administrators.
Mr. Howley, who has known Mr. Khalil for about a year, having met him after Mr. Khalil began speaking out in campus protests, said he was frustrated by depictions of Mr. Khalil as a dangerous person.
“This is someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue,” he said. “This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things. So it’s really disturbing to see that kind of misrepresentation of him.”
Dictatorial regimes around the world have a long history of opposing peaceful protest, particularly by students. Young people in Russia who speak out against President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion and ongoing bombing campaign against civilians in Ukraine, for example, are frequently imprisoned for multiple years in barbaric gulags.
This is because student protests have a long history of successfully producing profound social and political change. It’s unlikely, for example, that the Vietnam War would have resolved when and the way it did without the student protests Louise and I participated in during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Student protests have, for example, a long and storied history including:
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) protests against segregated lunch counters in the South that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1965;
- The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (1964-65), led by Mario Savio, which inspired student movements across the nation;
- Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, which sparked youth protests across the world;
- The Soweto Uprising of 1976 saw thousands of Black South African students protest against apartheid; the brutal response drew international attention, bolstering the global anti-apartheid movement;
- The Iranian Student Revolution of 1979, which led to the Shah fleeing the country;
- The 1989 student-led Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which led to a peaceful transition to democracy in that nation; and
- The student-led Hong Kong Umbrella Movement of 2014 which, although it was eventually sadistically crushed, helped awaken the world to the brutality of the Chinese Communist regime.
Even former President Richard Nixon, wannabe fascist that he was, didn’t consider arresting and deporting students for speaking out, although former President Ronald Reagan’s far more subtle solution was to end free college and thus raise the stakes for student protestors who could lose scholarships or get thrown out of school saddled with massive debt and no degree.
Trump decided to up the ante even further with this action against Khalil, hoping it gets wide publicity to cow any other students who may consider protesting any policies of his; it’s extremely unlikely this type of action will be limited to protests against what Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Amnesty International have called Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing on the West Bank: He doesn’t want students in America protesting in any way at any time.
As a result, we stand on the edge of the fulfillment of Washington’s and Franklin’s explicit warnings of a possible dystopian future.
Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?
Will Trump next go after student protestors who are American citizens?
Will any elected Republicans find their spine, courage, or principles to defy his takedown of the work our Founders fought and died for?
As they say in the radio business, stay tuned…
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