The recent illegal detentions of international students (so far this hasn’t happened to the Colorado students) and revoking F-1 visas for spurious or unspecified reasons are police-state-style actions that go hand in hand with the Trump administration’s larger attacks on U.S. institutions of higher education. As billions of dollars of Congressionally-approved research funding are withdrawn, labs are shutting down, graduate programs are in disarray, and opportunities for undergrads are disappearing.

Revoking student visas in this fashion has never happened according to Violeta Chapin, a CU Boulder law professor and expert in immigration law. “What we’re seeing now is a far different, unprecedented intrusion by the executive (branch) into this particular area.” The Trump administration is attempting to police what kinds of students are permitted to travel and study here (Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist”). I hope Colorado’s international students will receive the legal protection they’re entitled to, but how devastating to have their personal and academic lives upended in this way. It’s hard to imagine we won’t see a huge decline in the numbers of international students choosing to study in the U.S. (currently there are more than 1.1 million and they are a valuable demographic for many reasons). Why would they come here if they won’t be able to think and act freely, study what they want and be safe from arbitrary arrest?

In 1957, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, in a concurring opinion in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, stated that a college or university must “determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” (Quote from the President of Amherst College, Michael A. Elliott’s, March 24th letter “Academic Freedom at Amherst and Beyond.”) When there are complaints and failures within an academic institution, such as maintaining a safe campus or protecting students from discrimination or harassment, there are legal processes for addressing them. It violates all standards of academic freedom for the federal government to demand (and be granted, in the case of Columbia University) the ability to “oversee” academic departments, campus security and/or admissions processes.

American colleges and universities have led the world but soon that will be no more, and perversely that may be one of the administration’s goals. An educated populace is not a controllable and compliant one.

Diane Schwemm, parksidediane@gmail.com

Let’s not miss the forest of rising fascism for the trees of individual outrages. Treating the revocation of foreign students’ visas, the abduction of foreign students themselves, the deportation of thousands of people from U.S. soil, the elimination of DEI programs, the erasure of selected historical events from textbooks and museums, the dismantling of our social safety net, the demonization and active oppression of sexual and gender minorities and the attacks on science and education as issues that must be addressed on their individual merits is not only overwhelming, it is also divisive. These issues are actually the same issue made to look like separate issues to overwhelm us and to divide target groups from one another.

The unifying issue here is a lack of due process. People, historical records, proven scientific facts about us and our world and civil rights are being “disappeared” before our very eyes without any public deliberation and, in many cases, without any explanation at all. The absence of transparency and opportunities for discussion render effective debate about the merits of any given decision impossible.

Neither the specifics of immigration law nor the rules governing Medicaid spending are going to save us. In this context, we must focus on the overall threat to all of us: without due process, we and our rights can all be “disappeared.”

In this context, we must treat every due process violation as a violation of our own personal civil rights. While it is unlikely that everyone or every group will be deported, targeted or otherwise persecuted, we can be sure that the list of victims will grow as the administration needs new distractions and scapegoats, faces new sources of opposition, decides to act on new prejudices, or just feels sadistic. As we really don’t know who is next, we must act as if we or the people we love are next.

This perspective has practical implications. On a psychological level, we must keep ourselves sane by maintaining a secure personal support system, finding ways to relax and play and engaging in other forms of self-care. Even more difficult, we must imagine how it would feel to be deported, fired, erased from history, etc. without due process. We must stay with that feeling long enough to develop both empathy for those who are actually being targeted and plans for helping them.

In other words, we must try to act as if our best friend was the one sent to an ICE facility, fired, or denied medical treatment without due process. Under such circumstances, I would find a way to mobilize. I would make calls, write letters to media outlets and government officials, show up at immigration detention facilities, give money to and join groups fighting against social injustice in general and/or social injustice directed at particular groups, support librarians and educators resisting censorship, attend protests and make posters to hold at them, voice my opposition to current policies whenever appropriate and safe, provide support to targeted individuals and groups and so on. And, if I were subjected to any of these violations, I would want my support system, and as many others as possible, to do the same.

While the firing of a park ranger without due process may seem like an unfortunate but personally distant event, we must remember that there is also something in it for us. Taking action to oppose injustice can feel empowering to the person taking such action; this may be an especially attractive incentive given the helplessness that many of us are feeling. Moreover, taking action while we can may reduce the chances that we or our loved ones will experience the same sort of civil rights violation and require support from the steadily diminishing population who retain the right to protest and feel brave enough to use it.

If we have trouble identifying with the target group of the moment, we must find a way to get in touch with our common humanity.

For example, read or watch something about the group in question and try putting yourself in their shoes.

I am asking myself and anyone reading this to make a conscious effort to cultivate and expand the scope of their empathy so that taking action becomes not only ethically imperative but also emotionally necessary. After all, the current administration is counting on the ability of their hate-filled rhetoric to call up and misdirect our conscious and unconscious fears and rage. We must counter their efforts with the full force of empowered empathy, and we must do so every day.

Elyse Morgan, emorgan2975@gmail.com