EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Goes to court for foreign students’ free expression, but refused to run a College Republicans op-ed because ‘inflammatory’ and ‘racist’ content
This past summer, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration (on behalf of the Stanford University student paper) for allegedly violating foreign students’ free speech rights.
The suit challenges the Immigration and Nationality Act‘s provision on giving the secretary of state the power to “personally determine” if a noncitizen’s speech “compromises a compelling foreign policy interest,” and to revoke noncitizens’ visas “’at any time’ for any reason.”
More and more student papers have joined an amicus brief in support of the suit, one of the latest being the Yale Daily News.
FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick had said “Lawfully present noncitizens on college campuses should not have to fear that voicing the ‘wrong’ opinion in a class discussion, term paper, or in the student newspaper could result in their deportation.”
Two years ago, Rubio and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis specifically pointed to foreign students who openly demonstrate support for recognized terrorist groups — such as Hamas.
While on the 2024 presidential campaign circuit, DeSantis said “When the blood wasn’t even dry on the Israelis who had been massacred, you had people in America protesting in favor of Hamas.” He added if he was president, he’d cancel such students’ visas and “send them home.”
With all that in mind, as Washington University in St. Louis law professor Gregory Magarian put it, “the state of constitutional doctrine about non-citizens’ rights is complicated and contested” (emphasis added).
I tend to agree that canceling visas and sending legal noncitizens home just for expressing opinions is crossing a constitutional line. On the other hand, if noncitizens here on visas openly support terrorist groups, why should we let them stay? Why even have “terrorist” designations then, let alone legislation like the Immigration and Nationality Act?
And as I’ve asked repeatedly recently, why should free-speech sympathizers continue to care about such … when progressives — including recent immigrants — want to prevent people whom they don’t like from speaking?
Ron DeSantis ‘encourages violent policy’ and thus should be prevented from speaking at Stanford
Case in point: Stanford’s Amanda Campos (pronouns “she/her”), who came to the U.S. from Brazil in 2017, studies “environmental and energy policy and justice,” and is a self-described “climate justice, immigrant rights, and Free Palestine activist” in addition to “socialist feminist abolitionist sack of stardust.”
Campos (pictured) did not like that Ron DeSantis came to speak at Stanford’s Hoover Institution on October 17.
“As a Florida resident, immigrant and woman – or as someone with common sense – I can only call him what he is: a racist, queerphobic, sexist, power-hungry and bootlicking politician,” Campos said of the governor.
[DeSantis is] a racist with power. He promptly signed a state bill prohibiting any local government from passing sanctuary city bills, which would prohibit local police from assisting ICE and have been credibly found to lower crime rates. He was behind the 12-million-dollar scheme that tricked 48 asylum seekers in San Antonio, Texas – yes, you read that right, it was outside his state – into taking private flights to Massachusetts, only to be abandoned upon arrival. Today, DeSantis is an ardent supporter of the increasingly Gestapo-style ICE – recall Alligator Alcatraz – which has rapidly escalated its family separation, brutality and illegal kidnappings.
What’s more, DeSantis “encourages violent policy”: Abortion bans (never mind the actual procedure! Oh, and “anyone” can get pregnant, Campos says), anti-sanctuary practices, trimming Medicaid, “transphobic” and “ableist” laws, and “anti-gun safety” legislation.
As such, DeSantis’ Hoover Institution talk is “not education” but “fascist propaganda” — not worthy of an audience at a prestigious school.
Campos has only been in this country eight years, and now at the highly experienced age of 21 or so she wants those whose politics she doesn’t like to be muzzled.
I’m anything but an “America: Love It or Leave It” type, but it sure seems to me Campos would be much happier in her native land.
Isn’t also quite odd that The Stanford Daily would run Campos’ piece given its (alleged) adoration of free expression? Oh, sure, Campos’ op-ed includes the usual disclaimer “The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor,” but given its lawsuit against Rubio, et. al. it seems a bit hypocritical.
There is a thing called “editorial discretion,” and it’s exercised all the time by papers, student-run or otherwise. The Daily used it in 2020 when it refused to run an op-ed by the campus College Republicans due to its alleged “unsubstantiated and inflammatory claims that advanced a racist narrative,” and focus on protesters over police brutality.
(If “unsubstantiated” is a big deal, one may wonder how The Daily allowed this recent op-ed to see the light of day — which claims it’s illegal to set fire to gay pride and Black Lives Matter flags.)
Also in 2020, the paper’s then-EiC lamented in an op-ed that Stanford did not condemn Hoover Institution Fellow Scott Atlas for stating residents should “rise up” against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s draconian COVID restrictions … because (and the editor looked it up in the dictionary) “rise up” means “rise (up) in revolt” and “to fight against a ruler or government.”
A year later, The Daily’s editorial board chair called for the removal of the College Republicans from campus, claiming the group was the “most consistently unpunished offender” of “platform[ing] and promot[ing] racist, misogynistic and hateful rhetoric over the years.”
bUt MuH fReE sPeEcH.
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