Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to halt all federal funding for any college or school that allows “illegal protests” and vowed to imprison “agitators”, in a social media statement that prompted alarm from free expression advocates.
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” the US president wrote on Truth Social.
“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire) condemned Trump’s remarks.
“Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the group said, adding: “The [first amendment] protects controversial political speech; we don’t use the law to punish dissenters.”
Trump did not specify what constitutes an “illegal” protest, but the threat comes just one day after his administration announced it would review and could pull more than $50m in government contracts from Columbia University over the school’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students”.
The protests at Columbia last year over the bombardment of the Gaza Strip saw more than 100 students arrested and suspended. Last month, Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, expelled two students who disrupted a class called the “History of Modern Israel”.
The government taskforce also said it would review more than $5bn in grant commitments to Columbia to “ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities”.
Since the protests erupted on campuses last year, Republicans have frequently framed the demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza as expressions of support for Hamas, and last fall, it was revealed that top Republicans threatened to pull billions of dollars of federal funding from some of the US’s most prestigious universities for allowing the protests on their campus.
The announcement on Monday was made by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the US General Services Administration.
The health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said in the accompanying news release that “anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues.
“In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence,” Kennedy said. “Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.”
Columbia, in response, said that it was “fully committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University”. It added that the school looks forward to “ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff”.
Last spring, Columbia University was widely seen as the center of the student-led protests against the war in Gaza, part of widespread demonstrations against the war at universities both in the US and internationally.
Columbia students organized protests, held sit-ins, set up an encampment on campus and occupied a building, demanding an end to US support for Israel and for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. The protests resulted in mass arrests and suspensions of students, culminating in the resignation of the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, in the fall.
The university faced criticism for its tactics against the protesters and was also accused of failing to make Jewish students feel safe on campus.
In January, upon assuming office, Trump signed an executive order purporting to “combat antisemitism”. A fact sheet issued before the signing of the order quoted the president as saying that the federal government would, among other things, cancel the student visas of foreign students identified as “Hamas sympathizers” and deport those who participated in “pro-jihadist protests”.
The executive order was quickly met with pushback from free speech organizations warning that action against lawful protest would violate the US constitution.
At the time, Fire stated that “if today’s executive order reaches beyond illegal activity to instead punish students for protest or expression otherwise protected by the first amendment, it must be withdrawn.”
While protests on campuses have waned in recent months, demonstrations erupted again last week in New York. They came in response to the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, ordering the City University of New York (Cuny) to remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at Hunter College, and the expulsion of two students from Barnard College who interrupted a class on Israel last month.
A third student at Barnard College has reportedly since been expelled, in connection with the occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia from last spring.
