As Trump admin restores WPI foreign student visas, ACLU lawyer urges caution
A lawyer for two Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) students whose visas were revoked by the Trump administration remains cautious over the government's decision to reverse the terminations.
Gilles Bissonnette, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire, is one of four ACLU affiliates in New England representing five international students in a class action lawsuit against the federal government.
The lawsuit, which was filed this month in New Hampshire federal court, seeks to reinstate the student's terminated F-1 student visas, which would allow them to continue their studies, according to a written statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire.
Of the five students in the lawsuit, two of them, Hangrui Zhang and Haoyang An, both from China — are students at WPI in Worcester, according to the lawsuit.
The other students are Linkhith Babu Gorrela, Thanuj Kumar Gummadavelli, and Manikanta Pasula, who are all from India and students at Rivier University in New Hampshire.
On Friday, the Department of Justice announced it would reverse the termination of visa registrations for international students studying in the United States, according to Politico.
In court, the department said the records that were terminated from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems (SEVIS) would be restored, according to the BBC.
The SEVIS database is a web-based system used by the Department of Homeland Security to:
Maintain information on schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program
F-1 and M-1 students who come to the U.S. to attend those schools
Department of State-designated Exchange Visitor Program sponsors
J-1 visa Exchange Visitor Program participants
All five students named in the class action lawsuit have been added back to the database, Bissonnette told MassLive on Monday.
The lawyer, however, wants the government to assure him that the students will not see their statuses revoked again.
'I think what we remained concerned about and we want to make sure, there are protections for a scenario in which the students have the rug pulled out from them in the future,' Bissonnette said. 'We need to make sure in these cases that these students are protected going forward.'
The revocations in April took place without any notice or legal explanation, Bissonnette said. He told MasLive on Monday that the government has not filed anything in the federal court about the revocations.
He said his team and the government will meet in the coming days. He is looking for the government to prove in court that the students now have their F-1 student statuses again and that the government will not consider them terminated.
'That would provide significant protections and assurances to these students that this won't happen again,' Bissonnette said.
If the government fails to provide the assurances and protections, he said his team will move the lawsuit forward.
The defendants in the case are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS); U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Boston Field Office; the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Manchester Sub-Field Office; DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.
The status terminations disrupted the students' education in the middle of a semester as they worked to achieve degrees and followed all the rules required of them, according to the ACLU. Gorrela's graduation date for his master's program, for example, is May 20.
With terminated F-1 statuses, the students are also now at risk of detention and deportation, the ACLU wrote.
None of the five students have been detained as of April 28, but they are fearful for their lives, Bissonnette said.
'Not only do they live for several weeks in fear of possibly having their studies or training impacted — they live in fear now of 'Is ICE going to come knocking on my door?'' Bissonnette said. 'All we're asking for is just for the government to confirm that they maintain student status. It's pretty simple.'
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CNBC
22 minutes ago
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What to know about Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to L.A. protests
President Donald Trump says he's deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to immigration protests, over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. It's not the first time Trump has activated the National Guard to quell protests. In 2020, he asked governors of several states to send troops to Washington, D.C. to respond to demonstrations that arose after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Many of the governors he asked agreed, sending troops to the federal district. The governors who refused the request were allowed to do so, keeping their troops on home soil. This time, however, Trump is acting in opposition to Newsom, who, under normal circumstances, would retain control and command of California's National Guard. While Trump said that federalizing the troops was necessary to "address the lawlessness" in California, the Democratic governor said the move was "purposely inflammatory and will only escalate tensions." Here are some things to know about when and how the president can deploy troops on U.S. soil. Generally, federal military forces are not allowed to carry out civilian law enforcement duties against U.S. citizens except in times of emergency. An 18th-century wartime law called the Insurrection Act is the main legal mechanism that a president can use to activate the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest. But Trump didn't invoke the Insurrection Act on Saturday. Instead, he relied on a similar federal law that allows the president to federalize National Guard troops under certain circumstances. The National Guard is a hybrid entity serving state and federal interests. Often it operates under state command and control, using state funding. Sometimes National Guard troops will be assigned by their state to serve federal missions, remaining under state command but using federal funding. The law cited by Trump's proclamation places National Guard troops under federal command. The law says that can be done under three circumstances: When the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion; when there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or when the President is unable to "execute the laws of the United States," with regular forces. But the law also says that orders for those purposes "shall be issued through the governors of the States." It's not immediately clear if the president can activate National Guard troops without the order of that state's governor. Notably, Trump's proclamation says the National Guard troops will play a supporting role by protecting ICE officers as they enforce the law, rather than having the troops perform law enforcement work. Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in military justice and national security law, says that's because the National Guard troops can't legally engage in ordinary law enforcement activities unless Trump first invokes the Insurrection Act. Vladeck said the move raises the risk that the troops could use force while filling that "protection" role. The move could also be a precursor to other, more aggressive troop deployments down the road, he wrote on his website. "There's nothing these troops will be allowed to do that, for example, the ICE officers against whom these protests have been directed could not do themselves," Vladeck wrote. The Insurrection Act and related laws were used during the Civil Rights era to protect activists and students desegregating schools. President Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state's governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out. George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King. National Guard troops have been deployed for various emergencies, including the COVID pandemic, hurricanes and other natural disasters. But generally, those deployments are carried out with the agreement of the governors of the responding states. In 2020, Trump asked governors of several states to deploy their National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to quell protests that arose after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Many of the governors agreed to send troops to the federal district. At the time, Trump also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act for protests following Floyd's death in Minneapolis — an intervention rarely seen in modern American history. But then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper pushed back, saying the law should be invoked "only in the most urgent and dire of situations." Trump never did invoke the Insurrection Act during his first term. But while campaigning for his second term, he suggested that would change. Trump told an audience in Iowa in 2023 that he was prevented from using the military to suppress violence in cities and states during his first term, and said if the issue came up again in his next term, "I'm not waiting." 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CNN
25 minutes ago
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Analysis: The Musk blowup reveals how Trump is remaking the presidency
Through a panoramic series of actions, President Donald Trump is transforming the federal government into a vast machine for rewarding his allies and punishing those he considers his adversaries. Trump is using executive orders, federal investigations and regulatory decisions to deploy federal power against a stunning array of targets, ranging from powerful institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities and major law firms to individual critics from his first term and former President Joe Biden's top White House aides. Simultaneously, Trump is rewarding allies with presidential pardons, commutations, government contracts and the termination of federal regulatory or criminal investigations. The explosive breakup with Elon Musk has provided the most vivid demonstration yet of Trump's transactional view of the presidency. When Musk was Trump's most prominent political ally and benefactor, the White House brushed off complaints about the potential for conflicts of interest as the tech billionaire's companies competed for billions in government contacts. Then, when the two men fell out last week, Trump immediately threatened to terminate the contracts for Musk's companies. Trump struck a similar note on Saturday, telling NBC's Kristen Welker that if Musk began to fund Democratic campaigns in protest of the president's sweeping policy bill, 'He'll have to pay very serious consequences.' The extraordinary episode underscored how quickly anyone can move from Trump ally to adversary by opposing or questioning him in any way — and how dire the consequences can be for crossing that line. In his almost instinctive reaction to threaten Musk's contracts — even if it would be difficult to do in practice — Trump signaled unambiguously that staying in his favor would be the difference between favorable decisions by his administration and costly confrontations with it. The president sees little boundary between public policy by the federal government and personal fealty to him. 'Never before in this country has a president made so clear that mere disagreement with him or failure to show sufficient personal loyalty might cause that person to lose government contracts or even face investigation,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that analyzes threats to US democracy. 'That's how things work in Russia, and apparently, under Donald Trump, now here.' Until Trump, historians considered Richard Nixon the president who pushed hardest to bend federal legal authority into a lever to advance his personal and political interests — a process that culminated in the Watergate scandal and the disclosure of the infamous White House 'enemies list.' But while Nixon fulminated against his opponents in private, he never subjected them to anything approaching the bombardment of hostile federal actions that Trump has directed at his targets. 'You see very similar personality traits in the men, about how they feel about people and what they want to do about them,' said John Dean, who served as Nixon's White House counsel during Watergate and later revealed the existence of the enemies list. But, Dean added, whereas Nixon would often lose sight of his threats or back off when faced with resistance inside or outside his administration, Trump and his aides are moving to draft virtually every component of the federal government into this mission. 'Everything with Nixon is more or less a one-off,' Dean said, 'whereas with Trump it is a way of life.' The effect is that, with much less pushback than Nixon faced, Trump is now moving far faster and further toward reconfiguring the federal government's sweeping authority into an extension of his personal will. 'We are so far beyond Nixon's inclinations and disposition to employ the government to attack perceived enemies and perceived political adversaries,' Dean said, 'that it is the difference between spitballs and howitzers.' Almost daily, Trump is acting in new ways to deploy federal power in precision-focused attacks on individuals and institutions who have crossed or resisted him. He has revoked federal security clearances from an array of former officials (including Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Republican former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) and terminated federal security protection for others. He's withdrawn security clearances from and directed his administration to investigate two critics from his first term, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. Last week, Trump ordered a federal investigation into the right-wing conspiracy theory that aides to then-President Biden misused his autopen to implement decisions without his knowledge. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate Democrats' principal grassroots fundraising tool, ActBlue. Large institutions Trump considers hostile have faced comparable threats. He's signed executive orders imposing crippling penalties on several large law firms that have either represented causes or employed attorneys Trump dislikes. Trump has canceled billions of dollars in scientific research grants to prominent universities and escalated that offensive with a dizzying array of other measures against Harvard, including attempting to revoke its ability to enroll foreign students and publicly declaring that the Internal Revenue Service intends to revoke its tax-exempt status: The New York Times recently calculated that Harvard is now facing at least eight separate investigations from six federal agencies. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating '60 Minutes' over its editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, probing charges that television networks have engaged in 'news distortion,' and scrutinizing the proposed merger with Skydance Media that is being ardently pursued by CBS' parent, Paramount, and its controlling stockholder Shari Redstone. Trump's administration has arrested a judge in Wisconsin and US representative in New Jersey who have resisted his immigration agenda. While pursuing these penalties for critics, Trump has conspicuously rewarded allies. His Justice Department dropped federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has pledged to support Trump's immigration crackdown, and regulators have terminated high-profile enforcement actions against the crypto industry even as his family's financial ties to the industry have mushroomed. Trump has also issued a flurry of early second-term pardons targeted at his supporters, beginning with the mass pardon of January 6, 2021, rioters and extending to a growing list of Republican and conservative public officials. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, author of 'The Pardon,' a recent history of how presidents have used that power, said Trump's actions have no precedent. 'It's not even close,' Toobin said. 'I can't even think of even a parallel.' Taken together, these actions signal something like a mafia-style protection racket, Bassin argued. For those who meet the administration's demands, Bassin said, Trump is offering protection from federal interference, and for those who resist his demands, he's brandishing the opposite. The speed at which Trump flipped from praising to threatening Musk and his companies, Bassin added, 'is a perfect example' of how no one is safe from falling from one side of that line to the other — which allows Trump always to preserve the option of raising the price of protection with new demands. It's a method of operation, Bassin argued, that would be equally recognizable to Russian President Vladimir Putin or mobster John Gotti. Nixon unquestionably wanted to sharpen federal law and regulatory enforcement into the cudgel Trump is forging. Behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Nixon often bombarded his aides with demands to punish those he viewed as his political enemies. 'We have all this power, and we aren't using it,' Nixon exploded to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, in one August 1972 meeting captured by the White House taping system. At times, Nixon succeeded in channeling that power against his targets. He successfully pressed the Justice Department to intensify an investigation into kickbacks and illegal campaign contributions swirling around Alabama Gov. George Wallace. The administration tried for years to deport John Lennon (over a British conviction for possession of a half-ounce of marijuana) after Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond sent a letter to the Justice Department warning that the former Beatle might headline a series of concerts intended to mobilize young voters against Nixon's reelection. A team of White House operatives — known informally as 'the plumbers' because they were supposed to stop leaks to the press — undertook a succession of shady missions, culminating in the break-in to the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building that eventually led to Nixon's resignation. Chuck Colson, one of Nixon's most hardcore aides, tried to pressure both CBS and The Washington Post over their coverage of the administration by threatening FCC action to revoke the licenses of local television stations they owned. Colson and Nixon openly strategized about holding open the threat of a federal antitrust investigation to pressure the three television networks. According to research by Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, the plumbers even fleetingly discussed ways to assassinate investigative journalist Jack Anderson before they were diverted to a more urgent project — the Watergate break-in. In his obsessive hunt for leaks, Nixon illegally wiretapped the phones of both journalists and his own National Security Council aides. All these resentments converged in the development of what became known as the enemies list. The White House actually compiled multiple overlapping lists, all fueled by Nixon's fury at his opponents, real and imagined. 'It clearly originated with Nixon's disposition, anger, reaction to things he would see in his news summary in the morning,' said Dean. In an August 16, 1971, memo — titled 'Dealing with our Political Enemies' — Dean succinctly explained that the list's intent was to find all the ways 'we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.' Dean told me he wrote the memo in such stark terms because he thought it would discourage the White House. 'I actually wrote that memo that way thinking I would make this so offensive … that they would just say, 'This is silly, we don't do this kind of stuff,'' he said. 'I never got a response to that directly, but when I went to the (National) Archives decades later, (I saw) Haldeman had written 'great' on the memo with an exclamation point.' In fact, though, enthusiasm in the White House did not translate into action at the agencies. On the advice of Treasury Secretary George Shultz, the IRS commissioner put the list in his safe and ignored the White House request that he audit the people on it. Subsequent investigations found no evidence that those on the enemies list faced excessive scrutiny from the IRS or other government harassment. Once Dean revealed the list's existence during the 1973 hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, inclusion on it became 'something for people to celebrate,' he recalled. 'I have actually spoken to (reunions of) a couple groups of members, people who have been on the list, because they had no consequences other than a badge of honor.' That was a common outcome for Nixon's rages. The Justice Department eventually dropped the case against Wallace. The courts blocked Lennon's removal. The Washington Post did not lose licenses for any of stations, said Feldstein, author of 'Poisoning the Press,' a book about Nixon's relationship with the media. 'Trump is doing what Nixon would have liked to have done,' Feldstein said. 'Even Nixon didn't take it as far.' The differences between Nixon and Trump in their approach to federal enforcement and investigative power extends to their core motivations. Nixon, as Dean and other close observers of his presidency agree, wanted to retaliate against individuals or institutions he thought opposed or looked down on him. Trump certainly shares that inclination. But Trump's agenda, many scholars of democratic erosion believe, pushes beyond personal animus to mimic the efforts in authoritarian-leaning countries such as Turkey and Hungary to weaken any independent institutions that might contest his centralization of power. 'Although some of it was (motivated by) revenge, the huge difference here is most of what Nixon did was to protect himself, politically and personally,' said Fred Wertheimer, who served as legislative director of the government reform group Common Cause during the Watergate scandal. 'Trump is out to break our democracy and take total control of the country in a way that no one ever has before.' One telling measure of that difference: Trump is openly making threats, or taking actions, that Nixon only discussed in private, and even there with constant concern about public disclosure. Trump's willingness to publicly deliver these threats changes their nature in several important ways, said David Dorsen, an assistant chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee and former federal prosecutor. Simply exposing an individual or institution to such an open threat from the world's most powerful person, Dorsen noted, can enormously disrupt their life, even if the courts ultimately prevent Trump from acting on it — a point recently underscored by Miles Taylor in an essay for Politico. And because Nixon's threats were always delivered in private, Dorsen added, aides dubious of them could ignore them more easily than Trump officials faced with his public demands for action. Maybe most important, Dorsen said, is that by making his threats so publicly, Trump is sending a shot across the bow of every other institution that might cross him. 'Trump is legitimizing conduct that Nixon did not purport to legitimize,' Dorsen said. 'He concealed it, he was probably embarrassed by it; he realized it was wrong.' As the IRS pushback against the enemies list demonstrated, Nixon's plans faced constant resistance within his own government, not only from career bureaucrats but often also from his own appointees. 'He failed in getting key officials in the government to do what he wanted,' said Wertheimer, who now directs the reform group Democracy 21. If that kind of internal stonewalling is slowing Trump's sweeping offensives against his targets, there's little evidence of it yet. Congress was another constraint on Nixon. Not only did the administration need to fear oversight hearings from the Democrats who controlled both the House and Senate, but at that point a substantial portion of congressional Republicans were unwilling to blink at abusive actions. Ultimately it was a delegation of Republican senators, led by conservative icon and former GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who convinced Nixon to resign during Watergate. By contrast, Trump today is operating with 'a completely compliant Republican Congress' and has filled the federal government, including its key law enforcement positions, with loyalist appointees who 'operate as if they are there to carry out his wishes, period,' said Wertheimer. As Feldstein pointed out, Trump also can worry less about critical press coverage than Nixon, who governed at a time when 'there were just three networks and everybody watched those.' That leaves the courts as the principal short-term obstacle to Trump's plans. In Nixon's time, the federal courts consistently acted across party lines to uphold limits on the arbitrary exercise of federal power. Three of Nixon's own appointees joined the unanimous 1974 Supreme Court decision that sealed his fate by requiring him to provide Congress his White House tapes. John Sirica, the steely federal district judge who helped crack the scandal, was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Today, federal district and appellate courts are mostly demonstrating similar independence. The New York Times' running tally counts nearly 190 rulings from judges in both parties blocking Trump actions since he returned to office. 'I think we've seen the largest overreach in modern presidential history … and as a result, you've triggered a massive judicial pushback,' said Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, a group fighting many of Trump's initiatives in courts. 'I won't say democracy has won so far, because of the damage that Trump and his ilk have done, but I will say Trump lost.' But even if courts block individual Trump tactics, the effort required to rebuff his actions still can impose a heavy cost on his targets. And, on the most important cases, these lower court legal rulings are still subject to reconsideration by the Supreme Court — whose six- member Republican-appointed majority has historically supported an expansive view of presidential power and last year voted to immunize Trump against criminal prosecution for virtually any actions he takes in office. So far, the Supreme Court has sent mixed signals by ruling to restrain Trump on some fronts while empowering him on others. 'We haven't found out yet what the Supreme Court is going to do when … they get the really big cases,' said Wertheimer. Those decisions in the next few years will likely determine whether Trump can fulfill the darkest impulses of Richard Nixon, the only president ever forced to resign for his actions in office.
Boston Globe
26 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Can the Ivy League band together to fight Trump's attacks on higher education?
Harvard University has suffered most of President Trump's blows, with the president stripping Advertisement At other schools, university presidents are giving interviews and campus speeches critical of the White House. Professors are unionizing to advocate for their research and students. And many alumni groups are spearheading public awareness campaigns to pressure their alma maters to fight back against Trump. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Because 'The fight is going to be won among the public,' said Jon Fansmith, vice president of the nonprofit American Council on Education. The Trump administration has arguied elite universities force-feed students leftist ideology and allowed antisemitism to run rampant since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. The administration has announced investigations of colleges and universities allegedly discriminating against white people and cut off or threatened to cut federal funding to many schools. Advertisement At Columbia University, leaders in March said they would comply with the administration's demands after officials froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding because the administration said the school failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. But that didn't seem to appease the White House, which announced last week it was targeting the school's accreditation, which could ultimately result in Columbia losing federal financial aid for its students. In April, several Big Ten conference schools formally signed on to a 'The Trump administration has no intention of backing down, and the only thing that will work to oppose him is strong collective action where we have each other's backs,' said Lieberwitz, whose university had Students on the campus at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., on March 7. HANNAH BEIER/NYT University presidents speak out Ivy League university presidents have responded differently to allegations of antisemitism on campus and the Trump administration's attempts to control how they run their schools. A Eisgruber, a constitutional law scholar, has been particularly outspoken, slamming Advertisement 'It's really important for conservative views to be welcome on a campus, but that's different from insisting on ideological balance on a campus,' Eisgruber told the host of The Daily this spring. After Harvard lost billions in science funding in April, Eisgruber posted 'Princeton stands with Harvard,' on his LinkedIn profile. At Brown University, the school's highest governing body recently extended president Christina Paxson's term through June 2028 in a show of confidence. Eisgruber's and Paxson's long tenures put them in better positions to speak out, higher education advocates told the Globe this spring. Other Ivies have recently been plagued by turnover among leaders, including high-profile oustings over responses to pro-Palestinian protests and allegations of antisemitism. The presidents of Yale, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania were installed this spring. 'The other university presidents are not standing up for Harvard because they don't want to be the next one on Trump's list,' said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Presidents, a union. University presidents are also strategizing with lawmakers in Washington D.C., professors told the Globe. The largest public outcry from university presidents came on April 22, when hundreds signed a public statement with the American Association of Colleges & Universities against 'unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.' Dartmouth president Sian Beilock was the only Ivy president to not sign, despite being urged to by professors and alumni, said Derek Jennings, an active member of the Native American Alumni Association of Dartmouth. The school's director of media relations, Jana Barnello, said like other schools, Dartmouth has filed supporting declarations in lawsuits over the funding cuts. Advertisement Professors rally to organize against Trump While university presidents seem to be taking a more careful and calculated approach, many professors rapidly organized this spring, forming union chapters in an attempt to defend their research. 'The level of increased faculty activism at Dartmouth is demonstrating that those of us who value the ideals and values of higher education are not waiting for administrators to lead on this,' said Bethany Moreton, who helped launch Dartmouth's chapter of the American Association of University Presidents in May 2024. Membership has since ballooned to 150, she said. Across the Ivy League, researchers said they're best suited to publicly advocate for their work, describing their life-saving findings and discoveries at rallies and in letters to lawmakers, groups told the Globe. While some observers warn of a potential brain drain among professors to Canada or Europe in response to Trump's cuts to research funding, some said Trump's attacks are creating more unity among colleagues than they've seen in years. 'If the intention was to divide faculty and pit us against each other with all the threats, it's really not working,' said Princeton English professor Meredith Martin. 'We care so much about our students that, if anything, this is bringing us together and making us stronger.' During the recent school year, membership in AAUP surged to 50,000, from 42,000, with almost all of that after Trump's inauguration in January, according to the group, and is the largest spike since its founding a century ago. Alumni stand up for schools Alumni are also pushing administrators at their alma maters to do more to stand up for their schools' autonomy. Harvard's alumni campaign, Crimson Courage, met Friday in a packed auditorium on the Cambridge campus to discuss how it is 'reaching out beyond Harvard to build the campaign,' an event description said. Advertisement The group Stand Up for Princeton and Higher Education amassed more than 9,000 alumni supporters in the past five weeks. Some held signs and wore buttons while walking the P-rade route on May 24. The group's In Connecticut, the group Stand Up for Yale sent a Similar alumni groups are taking shape across the Ivy League, with several urging university presidents to sign on to group statements, alumni told the Globe. Schools must band together formally, experts say Many graduates said their support is for all of higher education, not just their alma maters. At the recent Princeton reunion after the P-rade, a Yale Divinity School student caught up with a University of Chicago Law School graduate over barbecue. Outside nearby Firestone Library, recent graduates of Yale's and Harvard's law schools enveloped in hugs. 'The education my peers and I received was life changing, and our schools know this and are not backing down on ensuring future students get the same opportunities,' said Joshua Faires, who has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University. HoSang, from Yale's AAUP chapter, said Trump knows higher education institutions depend on each other and share one 'ecosystem,' and so a threat against one is a threat to all, he said. Advertisement 'There is no saving Yale, Harvard, or Princeton without standing up for all of higher education,' HoSang said. Still, faculty and alumni need more support from administrators, some warned —all the way from the presidents at the top, said Wolfson, the national AAUP president. 'I think they need to be bold,' Wolfson said. 'And this is hard to do but I'll say it anyway: They need to put their institution second, and then need to put higher education — as a critical sector in US society — first.' Claire Thornton can be reached at
