WASHINGTON—The American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia today sent guidance to D.C. universities urging them to reject any federal pressure to punish international students and faculty based on constitutionally protected speech.
This letter comes in response to executive orders—Executive Order 14161 and Executive Order 14188—as well as actions and communications related to campus speech coming from the Trump administration. Just this week, immigration agents detained Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Sur, who is in the country legally, for alleged ties to pro-Palestinian groups. The communications from the Trump administration include U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s February 17 letter to Georgetown University Law Center threatening to blackball its students in retaliation for the school’s teaching of ideas the Administration disfavors and President Trump’s March 4 social media post threatening arrest, expulsion and deportation of disfavored student speakers and termination of federal funding for universities at which disfavored speech occurs.
The ACLU-D.C. sent the letter to the presidents of University of the District of Columbia, American University, Catholic University of America, Gallaudet University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Howard University, and Trinity Washington University.
“The U.S. government is trying to coerce colleges and universities to crack down on students, faculty, and staff for expressing views the Administration doesn’t like,” said Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU-D.C. “Universities must reject the Trump administration’s attempted censorship of students and faculty and hold firm against any attempt to punish members of their communities for their beliefs.”
According to the ACLU-D.C., the White House is attempting to pressure university officials to target immigrant and international students, faculty, and staff, including holders of non-immigrant visas and lawful permanent residents or others on a path to U.S. citizenship, for exercising their First Amendment rights. The letter outlines four key principles universities should adhere to when addressing campus speech:
- The First Amendment prohibits the government from accomplishing indirectly, through coercion of third parties, what it cannot do directly: suppressing ideas it does not like and punishing the speakers who espouse them.
- Nothing obligates universities to act as deputies in immigration law enforcement — to the contrary, universities do not and should not veer so far from their core mission for good reasons.
- Schools must protect the privacy of all students, including immigrant and international students.
- Schools must abide by the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
This is the fourth set of guidance from the ACLU to universities since 2023. Dozens of ACLU affiliates have taken legal action, distributed campus know-your-rights materials, or issued additional guidance related to protest on campuses.
The letter sent to universities and colleges is available here: https://www.acludc.org/sites/default/files/aclu-dc_letter_to_colleges_ideological_exclusion_march_2025.pdf
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