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    Protesters Chain Themselves to Columbia Gates, Calling for Activists’ Release

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    About 10 demonstrators chained themselves to Columbia University’s campus gates at 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York on Monday afternoon, protesting the detention of two Palestinian student activists by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. They were part of a larger contingent that sat down outside the gate.The protest followed the detention last week of Mohsen Mahdawi, who is finishing undergraduate studies in philosophy at Columbia’s School of General Studies. Mr. Mahdawi was taken into ICE custody during his naturalization appointment in Vermont.Federal immigration officials detained Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the School of International and Public Affairs, last month. Both were organizers of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia.Demonstrators on Monday called for the immediate release of Mr. Mahdawi and Mr. Khalil. They held signs reading, “Free all our political prisoners” and chanted, “We want justice, you say how? Free Mohsen Mahdawi now!” They also read aloud Mr. Khalil’s writings from the detention center in Jena, La., where he is being held.A Columbia spokesperson said Monday that the university was “monitoring a disruption” and that its public safety officers had cut the locks of about 10 demonstrators.“We will follow all applicable policies and procedures for addressing potential violations,” the Columbia spokesperson said. “This small disruption has not impeded the ability of our students to attend classes as normal; all scheduled campus activities have proceeded as planned.”The New York Police Department said Monday evening that an unspecified number of people had been taken into custody and were being processed. It was unclear what charges they would face. One of those who was detained had been trying to pitch a tent, the police said.It was the second protest this month in which demonstrators attached themselves to Columbia’s gates. More

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      Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities

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      As he finished lunch in the private dining room outside the Oval Office on April 1, President Trump floated an astounding proposal: What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?The administration’s campaign to expunge “woke” ideology from college campuses had already forced Columbia University to strike a deal. Now, the White House was eyeing the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.“What if we never pay them?” Mr. Trump casually asked, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”The moment underscored the aggressive, ad hoc approach continuing to shape one of the new administration’s most consequential policies.Mr. Trump and his top aides are exerting control of huge sums of federal research money to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which they see as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.Their effort was energized by the campus protests against Israel’s response to the October 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas, demonstrations during which Jewish students were sometimes harassed. Soon after taking office, Mr. Trump opened the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is scrutinizing leading universities for potential civil rights violations and serving as an entry point to pressure schools to reassess their policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Caution and Courage on Campus Speech

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      More from our inbox:Fired in a Quake Zone Rachel Stern for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Universities Like the One I Run Aren’t Afraid to Let People Argue,” by Michael I. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 31):As the father of a high school senior currently deciding where to attend college, I agreed with much of what Dr. Kotlikoff had to say. But I was troubled by what he didn’t say. Right now, the greatest threat to academic freedom is the Trump administration.Foreign students are being detained and threatened with deportation for constitutionally protected speech. The independence of academic departments is being threatened by the White House. Universities are scrubbing their official documents of words the administration deems unacceptable. Defending free speech on campus while not calling this out by name can have only one explanation: fear.I sympathize. Putting your institution in this administration’s cross hairs risks devastating punishment. But when those who ought to be the greatest defenders of intellectual freedom stay silent or address such threats obliquely, we should all be scared.When I was a college student, I got to live out the idyllic fantasy that elite schools have marketed for generations: stimulating classes, extracurriculars and lazy afternoons in the quad. My daughter might have a very different experience. Her school might face devastating budget cuts for daring to defy the president. She’ll likely see research disrupted, graduate students’ and professors’ lives upended. She might witness international students being apprehended by masked law enforcement officers for speaking freely.I’m sorry she won’t get my carefree experience. But I hope the leadership of her school shows her something far more valuable: courage.Michael HandelmanBrooklynTo the Editor:Michael I. Kotlikoff’s essay rang true to me — not as theory, but as lived experience. I was a Cornell undergraduate when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. I sat in a class where a professor asked if any students were Republican. Nobody raised a hand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate Panel Demands Information About Gaza Protest Group at Columbia

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      Lawmakers want the university to turn over all its records about Students for Justice in Palestine. At Northwestern University, two professors sued over a separate request.A Senate committee asked Columbia University to provide extensive information about Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that had been at the center of protests on campus over Israel and Gaza.Information sought by the committee, including “all records in the university’s possession related to SJP and its on-campus activities,” was requested by Wednesday in a letter signed by Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.After a judge directed the university late Wednesday to say what materials it intended to disclose and to wait to produce them until Friday, the school acknowledged that order and said it planned to turn over “policies and guidance,” but that it would not identify individual students.The Senate committee’s demand was disclosed in a court filing this week connected to a lawsuit filed by seven anonymous students at Columbia and Barnard, its affiliated women’s college, along with Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia student whom the Trump administration is trying to deport.The suit had asked a judge to bar school officials from handing over confidential disciplinary records to lawmakers. On Wednesday, two clinical professors of law at Northwestern University in Illinois filed a similar suit.Republican lawmakers have said they are investigating an epidemic of antisemitism within higher education, but critics have said the Trump administration and its allies are conducting a broad crackdown on political speech.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Obama Calls for Universities to Stand Up to Trump Administration Threats

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      Former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom in a campus speech on Thursday.He also said schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”Mr. Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March. It later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates.At Harvard, where the university has made efforts to respond to Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      London Police Arrest Gaza Protest Planners at Quaker House

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      Quakers in Britain said the raid, in which six youth activists unaffiliated with the religious group were arrested, “clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest.”Quakers in Britain are reeling from what they say is an unheard-of violation of one of their places of worship by police officers who forced their way into a meeting house in London and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests.“No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said in a statement issued after the raid.But on Thursday evening, the pacifist group said, more than 20 uniformed police officers, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the meeting house in Westminster, breaking open the front door “without warning or ringing the bell.”The officers searched the building and arrested six women at a gathering of Youth Demand, an unaffiliated activist group that was renting a room to meet in, the Quakers in Britain said.The Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed Youth Demand’s plans to “shut down” London with protests next month, according to British media. The police said that while they recognized the right to protest, “we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality,” British media reported.The arrests raised alarms in England, and came amid a crackdown on Gaza War protesters in the United States, especially on college campuses, where some students have denounced Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Utah Bans Most Flags, Including Pride, at Schools and Government Buildings

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      The new law is among the most restrictive governing displays of flags, and is part of a polarizing debate focused on the Pride flag and other expressions of L.G.B.T.Q. support.The Utah State Legislature approved a measure that bans the display of all but approved flags in schools and government buildings, a divisive move that civil rights groups have said will undermine free expression for L.G.B.T.Q. people and their supporters.The measure, which became law on Thursday, allows only flags explicitly exempt from the ban — including the United States flag, the Utah state flag and military flags — to be displayed. Other flags, such as the Pride flag and those supporting political causes, will be barred from being flown at government buildings.The new law is one of the most restrictive passed by a state to govern the display of flags, in what has become a polarizing debate largely focused on the Pride flag and other expressions of L.G.B.T.Q. support.Other states, such as Idaho, have passed restrictions on the display of flags in schools, while lawmakers in Florida are considering similar proposals. Supporters of the measure have framed it as a way to make schools and government buildings less political.“Tax payer funded entities shouldn’t be promoting political agendas,” Trevor Lee, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said on social media on Friday. “This is a massive win for Utah.”In a letter on Thursday, Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said he had “serious concerns” about the bill. He said he had allowed it to become law without his signature because his veto would have been overridden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What We Know About the Detentions of Student Protesters

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      The Trump administration is looking to deport pro-Palestinian students who are legally in the United States, citing national security. Critics say that violates free speech protections.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the State Department under his direction had revoked the visas of more than 300 people and was continuing to revoke visas daily.Pool photo by Nathan HowardThe Trump administration is trying to deport pro-Palestinian students and academics who are legally in the United States, a new front in its clash with elite schools over what it says is their failure to combat antisemitism.The White House asserts that these moves — many of which involve immigrants with visas and green cards — are necessary because those taken into custody threaten national security. But some legal experts say that the administration is trampling on free speech rights and using lower-level laws to crack down on activism.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the State Department under his direction had revoked the visas of more than 300 people and was continuing to revoke visas daily. He did not specify how many of those people had taken part in campus protests or acted to support Palestinians.Mr. Rubio gave that number at a news conference, after noting that the department had revoked the visa of a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University. He did not give details on the other revocations.Immigration officials are known to have pursued at least nine people in apparent connection to this effort since the start of March.The detentions and efforts to deport people who are in the country legally reflect an escalation of the administration’s efforts to restrict immigration, as it also seeks to deport undocumented immigrants en masse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Consumer Bureau Seeks to Undo Settlement and Repay Mortgage Lender

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      The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to return a $105,000 penalty it collected last fall when it resolved a discrimination lawsuit.Under President Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped nearly a dozen enforcement cases brought during the Biden administration, ending lawsuits against banks and lenders for a variety of financial practices that the watchdog agency no longer considers illegal.But on Wednesday, the bureau went a step further: It is seeking to give back $105,000 that a mortgage lender paid to settle racial discrimination claims last fall.In an especially strange twist, the case — against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-based lender — was brought during Mr. Trump’s first term by Kathleen Kraninger, the director he appointed to run the consumer bureau.Russell Vought, who became the agency’s acting director last month, said it had “used radical ‘equity’ arguments to tag Townstone as racist with zero evidence, and spent years persecuting and extorting them.”In its filing asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to set aside the settlement it approved in November, the bureau said it had found “significant undisclosed problems” in its handling of the lawsuit, which the new leadership called an “unmerited” complaint that violated the defendants’ First Amendment free-speech rights.The case began in 2020 when the consumer bureau accused Townstone of redlining and breaking fair-lending laws by discouraging residents living in majority-Black neighborhoods from applying for its housing loans. It homed in on comments made during the company’s radio show and podcast, “The Townstone Financial Show,” saying they were intended to rebuff Black borrowers or those seeking to buy homes in certain neighborhoods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More