Fearing legal repercussions, online harassment and professional consequences, student journalists are retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students perceived to be associated with the pro-Palestinian movement.
Editors at university newspapers say that anxiety among writers has risen since the arrest of the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention fighting efforts to deport her. While the government has not pointed to evidence supporting its decision to revoke her visa, she wrote an op-ed last year in a student newspaper critical of Israel, spurring fears that simply expressing views in writing is now viewed as sufficient grounds for deportation.
Ozturk is one of nearly a dozen students or scholars who have been seized by immigration officials since 8 March, when Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and green card holder, was arrested and placed in deportation proceedings over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. Student editors report particularly acute anxieties among international students who have contributed to their newspapers, but say that requests to take down stories over fears of retaliation are coming from US citizens, too.
At Columbia University, Adam Kinder, the editor of the Columbia Political Review, said his publication has been asked to take down nearly a dozen articles and halt the publication process of over a dozen more in response to mounting pressure in recent weeks. His team has complied with those requests. “For students who disagree with the Trump administration’s stance, they fear real retaliation,” Kinder said.
At Stanford University, the Stanford Daily has also seen a surge in takedown requests in recent weeks, according to its editor, Greta Reich. “One came in, then two, then five, then 10 – it just really started piling up very quickly,” she said. The requests, she said, ranged from sources seeking anonymity to opinion writers wanting their names removed, and even demands to blur out identifying images. One former staff editor, an international student, quit entirely, according to Reich. “They didn’t want to be associated with any publication or article that could get them in trouble,” she said.
Kinder, too, has had three staff writers resign and four more go on hiatus of fear that their association with certain articles could jeopardize their safety or future career prospects.
The growing risk has prompted a coalition of national student journalism organizations to issue an alert on Friday calling on student papers to reconsider longstanding editorial norms around unpublishing stories and anonymization.
“What we are suggesting today stands in opposition to how many of us as journalism educators have taught and advised our students over the years,” the alert reads. “These are not easy editorial decisions, but these are not normal times.”
An ethical dilemma
Takedown requests present ethical dilemmas familiar to any newsroom, and student papers are no exception, with young editors needing to balance high-stakes safety concerns with the journalistic value of transparency. Some are exploring alternatives to full removals, such as de-indexing controversial articles – removing them from search results while keeping them live on their websites.
One editor at an Ivy League university, who requested anonymity given the sensitivities of the issue, said their publication was currently weighing this approach. “It became clear that no solution was going to be perfect. If you delete an article or leave it full of holes, it’s obvious something happened. That could just draw more attention,” they said. They also pointed out that removing articles entirely could backfire, as content often remains accessible through web archives including the Wayback Machine.
At the University of Virginia, the Cavalier Daily has historically refused takedown requests, but its editor, Naima Sawaya, acknowledged that the current climate was different. “One of our staffers, an immigrant, had to resign from our editorial board after we published pieces about Trump’s policies on universities, specifically regarding immigrants and pro-Palestine activism,” she said. The student, she said, was advised by the university’s international studies office that being publicly linked to these articles could pose risks to their visa status.
Sawaya has always viewed the paper as an archive. “We try to emphasize to our staffers when we’re onboarding them that the things they write are becoming part of the historical record,” she said. Recent concerns around student safety have started to challenge her view. “If a staffer today asked for a past article to be removed for their safety, I would remove it,” she admitted.
At New York University’s Washington Square News, editor Yezen Saadah said that while his publication does not publish anonymous bylines, staff are finding ways to respond to contributors who are at risk. “Some staff members have stepped back from reporting roles due to safety concerns, but they still contribute in [other] editorial capacities,” he said.
An editor at a public university in California, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said their newsroom had seen a dramatic increase in anonymization requests since Ice began arresting international students – from opinion writers seeking to remove their names from articles critical of Israel or Trump, to sources seeking to anonymize their quotes. They said international students were now only willing to speak to reporters under condition of anonymity.
“Most requests come from international students, though domestic students have also expressed concerns,” they said.
In February, the Purdue Exponent, a student paper at Purdue University in Indiana, removed the names and images of student protesters advocating for Palestinian human rights from its website, citing safety concerns and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which prioritizes minimizing harm. “Pro-Palestinian students are under attack, so we’re removing their names,” the paper announced in an editorial. The paper immediately found itself at the center of a rousing conversation about journalistic ethics, and its editor reportedly received more than 7,000 emails, including death threats.
Mike Hiestand, a lawyer at the Student Press Law Center, said that while student media traditionally resisted takedown requests, the current climate has forced a re-evaluation. “The reluctance to comply with takedown requests was based on a world that existed before January 2025,” Hiestand said.
Lindsie Rank, the campus advocacy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also reiterated how much the risk environment has changed. “If one of these cases had called our hotline six months ago, our response would have been: ‘This isn’t really a legal issue. This is more of an ethical question.’ But that has changed,” she said.
Sawaya, from the Cavalier Daily, hasn’t yet taken down any pieces. But like other editors, she is grappling with how the new political reality is affecting the field she hopes to enter professionally when she graduates.
“One of the hardest things right now is getting people to talk to us – even people whose job it is to talk to us, like university communications officials,” she said. “It feels like there’s real fear.”
