NEW YORK: Biliana, an international student at New York’s Columbia University, is studying for exams but fears being arrested by immigration police.
Columbia professors meanwhile are scrambling to save research funding in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s administration.
An atmosphere of crisis hovers over campus as the semester winds down, as the White House accuses the prestigious university and other Ivy League schools of anti-Semitism and “woke” liberal ideology.
Several hundred foreign students nationwide have been threatened with the cancelation of their visas, while others have been targeted — and a few arrested, including at Columbia — over everything from participation in pro-Palestinian protests to traffic violations.
“The situation is just terrifying,” said Biliana, a 29-year-old law student, who feels such dread that she asked not to be identified by her real name or even the Latin American country she comes from.
“You feel like you cannot say anything, you cannot share anything.”
She went on: “Me and my friends, we have not been posting anything on Twitter,” and many are deleting old posts for fear of crossing an invisible red line.
“Basically, what we’re trying to do is just to go to normal classes,” she said.
Last week, with final exams looming, 80 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested after attempting to overtake the main library.
The university’s interim president quickly condemned the protest action.
Biliana said she made sure to stay far away from these kinds of demonstrations, fearful she might show up in a photo and be falsely linked to the group.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said officials were reviewing the visa status of the “vandals” involved, adding: “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”
For newly elected student body president Oscar Wolfe, “There is definitely a heightened level of anxiety among international students, regardless of their involvement in the protests.”
Wolfe arrived on campus in September 2023, just before Hamas militants launched their October 7 attack on Israel, sparking the Gaza war and giving rise to protests that continue. He said he has known little more than a month of “normal” campus life.
Reflecting the turmoil, Columbia — which normally draws thousands of tourists to its Manhattan campus featuring colonnaded buildings, sweeping lawns and famous Alma Mater statue — has largely cut off public access to its grounds.
The Trump administration has accused the university of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on campus — something the school strongly denies — and has slashed some $400 million of Columbia’s federal funding.
Harvard, another Ivy League college, has defiantly pushed back — suing the administration to halt a federal freeze of $2 billion in grants.
Columbia, for its part, is negotiating with the government. But on Wednesday, interim President Claire Shipman announced that “nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants” were going to lose their jobs.
Rebecca Muhle, a professor of psychiatry, said her grant for a research project on autism was “not canceled, but it’s not funded — it’s in limbo.”
“I cannot hire anyone or make large purchases,” she said.
“There are many, many grants in this situation,” Muhle added. “It’s chaos, and you can’t conduct good science in chaos.”
History professor Matthew Connelly, who specializes in state secrets and their declassification, said he had been notified that the National Endowment for the Humanities had canceled two grants, with “no real reason given.”
The grants, he said, were intended to train scholars and archivists in analyzing and preserving historical records, particularly those in digital form — “one of the great challenges facing researchers.”
But Connelly said he was not about to throw in the towel.
“Universities are a target, because everything we do is completely contrary to what the Trump administration is trying to achieve,” he said.
“If we stopped teaching... if we stopped doing our research, we would be handing them a victory.”
Student leader Wolfe also views this as part of a broader battle.
“This is not just an attack on Columbia,” he said, “it is the opening act of an attack against civil society.”
Under Trump pressure, Columbia University ends semester in turmoil
https://arab.news/9n8rm
Under Trump pressure, Columbia University ends semester in turmoil
- Biliana said she made sure to stay far away from these kinds of demonstrations, fearful she might show up in a photo and be falsely linked to the group
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
