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Egypt Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
‘A fear campaign.' Students around the world are shocked, scared and saddened by US visa pause
CNN — When Adefemola Akintade learned that the Trump administration had suspended the processing of foreign student visas, she immediately went blank. 'I don't know what to do; this is something I've always wanted for the longest of times,' she told CNN, still with an air of disbelief. The Nigerian journalist has been accepted into Columbia Journalism School for a master's degree and was on the cusp of applying for her US visa. 'I don't have any backup plan,' the 31-year-old said. 'I put all my eggs in one basket – in Columbia… which is quite a risk.' She is due to start her degree in New York in August having already paid a hefty enrolment fee. Akintade is among thousands of people across the globe who were thrown into limbo on Tuesday when the US State Department instructed its embassies and consulates to pause the scheduling of new student visa interviews as it plans to expand social media vetting for applicants. It's the latest in a series of moves by the Trump White House targeting higher education, starting with an ongoing fight with Harvard University and then dramatically expanding in scope. CNN spoke with several affected overseas students, who expressed a mix of sadness, confusion and fear over the latest developments and the sudden upending of their lives. Many of them asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns about possible retribution or problems in the future. Adefemola Akintade at her undergraduate graduation from the University of Benin, Nigeria, in 2014. Courtesy Adefemola Akintade 'A scary time to study in the US' 'It feels like a really scary and unsettling time for international students studying in the US,' said one Canadian student who has also been accepted by Columbia. 'A lot of us chose to study in the US for its freedoms but now knowing that innocent social media posts could cost an education feels like censorship.' Some prospective students have even started self-censoring. Another Canadian, accepted into Harvard Law School, told CNN how a friend working on Capitol Hill advised her to go through her social media posts shortly after the visa suspension news broke. 'We were looking at a post from us at Pride, and my caption was simply a rainbow flag and then a trans flag. And I was on the phone with her 'and I was like, do I have to take this down?' Eventually we decided no, I could leave it up, but I changed the caption, I removed the trans flag. I don't know how to feel about that,' the student said. 'I do think it's real proof that it is a fear campaign that is incredibly successful,' she said, adding that she has deferred her place for this year after getting a job offer. 'I changed the caption with the anticipation that it could get worse. Today it is one (issue) and tomorrow it will be another one.' The State Department has required visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application forms since 2019, a spokesperson said. In addition, it had already called for extra social media vetting of some applicants, largely related to alleged antisemitism. But it's unclear what kind of post might pose a problem for an application from now on, or how these posts will be scrutinized. A Pro-Palestinian student wears a keffiyeh during the Columbia University commencement ceremony on its main campus, in Manhattan, New York City, on May 21. Jeenah Moon/Reuters British student Conrad Kunadu said he'd been grappling with an 'internal conflict' over his offer to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health at Johns Hopkins University after monitoring the crackdown on US colleges 'religiously' for the past few months. The case of a French scientist who was recently denied entry into the US for allegedly posting messages criticizing President Donald Trump was a 'big turning point' for Kunadu. 'I was like, oh, wow. Ok, no, this is potentially really bad. I just don't know if this is an environment that I actually want to be in,' he told CNN. After wondering whether he could manage his anxiety that 'something (he) wrote in 2016' could get him deported, Kunadu decided to stay in Britain and study at Oxford University instead. Despite being grateful to have another option, he described his situation as a 'lose-lose.' 'I wanted to study in the US not just because, for my interests in health security, it's where all the talent and resources are, but because it's the best way to make an impact on these issues at a global scale,' Kunadu said. Like many others, he can't help but mourn the possible academic research and advances that now may never come to fruition. Kunadu and another student who requested anonymity both mentioned being anxious about exploring topics in their studies that could be interpreted as dissent and ruffle official feathers. 'It's incredibly distressing as an American to hear that,' Michael Kagan, who directs the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, told CNN. 'It's not something someone should have to worry about to study in the United States… But I think, right now, it's totally rational. And if I were advising someone, I would tell them that, from a legal point of view, that seems like a reasonable thing to be concerned about.' Kagan described the visa halt as 'one of many attacks on higher education and immigrants… two of the Trump administration's favorite targets,' which in this case overlap. And while the directive is consistent with what the White House was already doing, he sees this as 'an unprecedented attack in a non-emergency time.' When asked whether those who had accepted college offers and were waiting for a visa appointment had any legal avenues available to them, Kagan was not encouraging. 'If someone is trying to enter and not yet getting a visa, (that person) usually has nearly no recourse,' he said. A sense of rejection In the 2023-34 academic year, more than 1.1 million international students studied at US higher education institutions, according to a report from the the Institute of International Education. The students CNN spoke with were all now trying to come to terms with their new reality and figure out their next steps. 'I'm still kind of hoping that there's a Supreme Court case that suddenly sees things in my favor,' Kunadu said. Oliver Cropley, a 27-year-old British student from a low-income background, told CNN that he was due to attend Kansas University for one year on a scholarship, but without a visa appointment he is no longer sure. 'It just feels like a kick when you are already down,' he said. 'Our strategy is a waiting game, we want to see if Trump is going to backtrack.' A glimpse into the Harvard University campus on Saturday May 24, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zhu Ziyu/VCG via Getty Images The Canadian accepted into Harvard Law School said she was glad the institution is taking a stand against the Trump administration. 'If Harvard caves, everybody caves and it's the collapse of civil society, right? If the wealthiest institution with the highest brand recognition folds, everyone folds,' she told CNN. For Nigerian journalist Akintade, who has always dreamed of studying at an Ivy League school, the feeling of rejection by the US is weighing heavily. 'This is the message I'm getting: we don't want you,' she said, with a deep sigh. Lisa Klaassen, Nimi Princewill and Quinta Thomson contributed to this report
NBC News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
'Heightened Scrutiny' details the high-stakes Supreme Court case over trans health care
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the next few weeks in a high-stakes case that could affect transgender people's access to transition-related care nationwide. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, concerns a law in Tennessee that prohibits certain care for minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, and whether the restrictions are discriminatory on the basis of sex and transgender status. A new documentary, 'Heightened Scrutiny,' follows Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, as he represents trans youth, their families and a doctor who filed suit against the law in April 2023. Strangio became the first openly trans person to argue in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments in December. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and will show at NewFest, a queer film festival in New York, on May 29, and then at other film festivals across the country. The film's director, Sam Feder, said it is a follow-up to another documentary he directed called ' Disclosure,' which was released in 2020 and evaluated how trans people are depicted in film and television. 'The motivation to make that film was to explore how the rise in visibility could lead to backlash,' Feder said. 'I did not know it would be as terrifying as it is now.' 'Heightened Scrutiny' features interviews with trans activists including actress Laverne Cox, and with journalists including Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School and a writer for The New Yorker; Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times opinion columnist; and Gina Chua, one of the most high-profile trans media executives. Much of the documentary focuses on the effects of increasing media coverage, particularly from The New York Times, on minors' access to transition-related care. Julie Hollar, a senior analyst at the media watchdog group FAIR, says in the documentary that she evaluated the Times' front page coverage for 12 months, and during that time, she said, the Times 'actually published more front page articles that framed trans people, the trans movement, as a threat to others than they did articles about trans people being threatened by this political movement.' Amy Scholder, who produced both 'Heightened Scrutiny' and 'Disclosure,' said that while researching media coverage of trans people over the last few years, she was astonished by how quickly much of the public appeared to go from celebrating trans visibility after 'Disclosure' to questioning it. 'It was disconcerting how many avowed feminists were questioning health care for trans adolescents and questioning the participation of trans people in sports, and especially adolescents in sports — things that just seemed so against my understanding and experience of what it means to be a feminist,' she said. She compared the public response to laws targeting trans youth to what she experienced during the AIDS epidemic, when people distanced themselves from the crisis because they didn't think it affected them or didn't want it to. 'Then the irony is,' Feder said, 'people thought it didn't affect them, but you chip away at anyone's bodily autonomy and you're chipping away at everyone's bodily autonomy.' The documentary shows that media coverage that is critical of transition care for minors has been referenced by state legislators trying to pass laws to restrict the care, and by states that are defending those laws in court, with Strangio saying at one point during the film that he had never previously seen news articles referenced so regularly as evidence in lawsuits. Feder said the film was originally going to focus entirely on media coverage, but Strangio's story allowed them to show viewers the real-world consequences of that coverage. They followed Strangio from July, just after the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the Skrmetti case, to Dec. 4, the day Strangio argued the case. The film shows Strangio the day after the election, a month before his oral arguments at the high court, when he says he's 'had moments of 'I can't do this again,' but then I wake up this morning and I think, 'F--- it, we fight.'' 'That's part of what is so extraordinary about him — he has that fight in him,' Scholder said. 'He knows how to be strategic, and he's such a brilliant legal mind and has always reminded us that we're going to take care of each other, and that these laws, for better or worse, will never actually take care of us.' Feder said that going forward, he hopes the film provokes conversations about how laws restricting transition-related care could have widespread effects outside of the trans community. He also said he hopes people will 'examine and understand how they want to be able to make decisions about their own body.' 'We're seeing state after state ban abortion, and soon it's going to be all contraception, and then it's who are you going to be able to marry, do you have any privacy in your own home? It's going there. This is one example of how we are a moment of complete civil liberty freefall,' he said.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
1 Writing Class, 35 Years, 113 Deals, 95 Books
The night before the start of his final semester teaching, after 35 years, Sam Freedman had a dream that he was going to miss class. He woke up with a strange jolt of relief. What comfort, he thought, to know that after three decades he still couldn't shake his pre-semester agita. The most difficult work, he has always believed, ought to evoke fear. 'All these years later I'm still anxious the night before, still concerned about getting here at 7:15 in the morning to be ready for all of you,' he said, facing his students on a Monday morning in January, wearing the same dark suit that he purchased in 1989 at Rothmans when he was first starting to teach and realized he needed formal professional attire. The seminar that Freedman teaches at Columbia Journalism School began in 1991 as something of an experiment, testing whether students could, in the course of a semester, produce a book proposal to sell and hopefully publish. The results have proved his hunch: The class has led to 113 book contracts and 95 published books, out of some 675 people who have taken it. This spring Freedman taught the course for the last time. He didn't want to become one of those fading professors he remembers from college, the types who used laminated notes and made students wish they'd been around to take the class in its glory years. The journalism school does not have plans to continue the class in the same form after his departure. 'The course is an institution in itself and you could almost say that about Sam — his retirement is certainly the end of an era,' said Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School, who regularly meets with Freedman at an Upper West Side diner to trade ideas about books and teaching. Freedman began his career as a reporter at the Courier-News in Bridgewater, N.J., and later worked on the culture and metro desks at The New York Times. He went on to write 10 books, including one following a New York City public-school teacher for a year. But he realized, at a certain point, that teaching the book-writing seminar for young journalists was one way of creating something that would outlive him. 'This is a big part of my life's work,' he told the class on their first day of the semester. 'Teaching this class, it feels like it's OK for me to keel over.' The day had echoes of a religious induction, as Freedman told his students to be 'worthy of the ancestors,' his term for class alumni. He projected onto the whiteboard at the front of the room a photo of his office 'shelf of honor,' crammed with most of the 95 books that came out of the class. Midway through that first day, four ancestors came to speak. 'If he believes you have a book in you,' said Grace Williams, the author of a 2024 history of a women-owned bank, glancing around the classroom, 'you definitely have a book in you.' The relationship between books and authors is obvious and glorified, but the relationship between books and teachers is less clear. The teachers behind books are often invisible, not the hand stirring the ladle to make the stew but the hand that once wrote the recipe down on some well-worn index card. When I wrote a book in 2020, about young doctors graduating from medical school early in the pandemic, I reached out for guidance to Freedman, the father of a childhood friend, because I'd heard about his Columbia course. He shared audio clips and met with me, over Zoom, to explain his approach to narrative writing. What struck me then was the exactitude with which he approached the craft, the lessons he pulled from his own career and then passed around the room: that the reader should never know more than the character, that authors should master methods before trying to subvert them, that narrative is an equation comprised of character, event, place and theme (N = C + E + P + T). 'Nothing in the class is contingent on having a gift, or having the muse speak to you,' said Leah Hager Cohen, who studied with Freedman in 1991, which led her to write 'Train Go Sorry,' about a school for the deaf. Freedman focuses particularly on demystifying the book proposal, a piece of writing that he likens to the albino alligators which, according to urban legend, once lived in the New York City subways — surviving without exposure to the public world, and therefore evolving to be mysterious and often misunderstood creatures. During the semester, his students draft such proposals. Afterward, he sometimes connects them to agents who he feels might be interested in their reporting topics, though he emphasizes that this won't always lead to representation. 'He's been the godfather to an awful lot of publishing over the years,' said George Gibson, the executive editor at Grove Atlantic. Over the decades that Freedman has taught, the publishing industry has gotten far more corporate. And other mentors who work with aspiring authors noted a recent increase in programs that support young book writers outside of journalism school, which can be costly to attend. What has stayed consistent, Freedman insists, is the need for an obsessive work ethic, and many of his lectures are paeans to just that. He emphasizes that there is no such thing as writer's block, only a failure to have done enough reporting, or an ego that's getting in the way of putting words on the page. He closes the classroom door at 9 a.m. and those who are late have to wait outside until the first break, at least an hour later. ('Latecomers will be seated at intermission,' read the sign he used to post on the door.) He tracks every grammatical error a student makes, with the expectation it will never be repeated. Kelly McMasters, who took the class in 2003 and went on to co-teach with Freedman, recalled that when she was his student, he got so fed up with her use of parentheses that he drew her a picture of parentheses, curling up like an old pet near a rug and a bowl of food, and showed it to the whole class. 'Your parentheses are fine,' she recalled him saying. 'Here's the rug they can lie down on, here's their food bowl. You may never use parentheses again.' 'I was so mad and hurt,' McMasters said. 'But you know what? He was one hundred percent right.' If Freedman enters his classroom a bundle of nerves, his students do far more so. One current student, Ally Markovich, 29, was so intent on getting into the class that she flew to Ukraine last summer to begin reporting her book proposal even before she had applied. Another, Carl David Goette-Luciak, 33, made a ritual of meeting his girlfriend for cheap pizza every Monday night so he could share with her the notes he took during Freedman's lectures. 'You can't go to the bookstore to tell the reader what you meant,' one of them read. 'It's this calculated measure of tough love,' Goette-Luciak said. 'He's developed some kind of algorithm of how hard he can push each individual person.' Freedman said that he holds himself to the same standards. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and was recovering from surgery, he took meetings with his students from home with his catheter concealed in a cloth Barnes & Noble bag. After his father died on a Saturday in 2010, he was in the classroom Monday morning with his line edits complete, ready to facilitate the writing workshop. 'As observant a Jew as I try to be,' he said, 'It was more important for me to be in the classroom teaching book class than to be observing shiva.' Back on that first day of the semester, Freedman gave the class marching orders that were impishly hyperbolic, though not far from what he really wanted out of them. 'Pull the heart of your work out of your chest and lay it out there for the gods, that's all I'm asking of you,' he told them. 'Not much.' During the farewell session, in early May, he told students that he expected that same exertion from all who left his classroom. 'In your book-writing life, I'm not going to be there to tell you what the deadline is,' Freedman said. 'All that is going to be on you.'
New York Times
23-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Columbia Journalism Review Faces the Kind of Crisis It Usually Covers
For more than a half-century, Columbia Journalism Review has critiqued the news media from its perch at America's most prestigious journalism school. Now, the magazine finds itself at the center of its own story. Last week, the Columbia Journalism School fired the publication's editor, Sewell Chan, after many people working under him raised complaints of unprofessional or abusive behavior. Mr. Chan was replaced on an interim basis by Betsy Morais, one of his deputies. The leadership change leaves the magazine, a product of the Columbia Journalism School known as CJR, reeling just as it — like many of the publications it covers — is looking for a sustainable business model. Much of Mr. Chan's job, which he began about seven months ago after holding editing positions at The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Texas Tribune, was to help chart that new course. CJR is in the early stages of a major fund-raising campaign, with Mr. Chan as its public face until last week. Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and the publisher of CJR, said the school was committed to keeping the magazine alive. It hasn't published a print edition for years, but frequently updates its website with news coverage, investigations and features. 'CJR is a crucial outlet, particularly at a time when journalism is being attacked from multiple directions,' Mr. Cobb said in a statement. 'Like many media organizations, we're navigating real challenges, but we've developed a thoughtful, forward-looking strategy for CJR's long-term viability.' CJR is synonymous with two pillars of American culture under great pressure: journalism and higher education. The magazine, founded in 1961, has historically relied on donations and university funding to survive. Both have lately come under strain, with a cash reserve drying up and Columbia's funding situation complicated by its clash with President Trump. In recent years, CJR relied on a $2 million cushion created during a fund-raising campaign nearly a decade ago. That reserve, which has been exhausted, was a linchpin of the magazine's annual budget of nearly $2 million, along with supplemental funding from the university and a small amount of subscription revenue. As that funding ran out, Columbia increased its support of CJR on a short-term basis. But that increase was supposed to be temporary, with a fund-raising campaign from the publication intended to fill the gap. Mr. Chan was hired last year by Mr. Cobb to serve as an emissary to the wider news media industry in addition to his role as editor, making him a fund-raiser for the magazine. Mr. Chan had begun to work with members of CJR's supervisory board on a new fund-raising campaign, including identifying potential donors, when he was fired last week, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The fund-raising campaign has been put on hold while the magazine figures out what to do next. The board, which was shocked by Mr. Chan's sudden exit, the two people said, is scheduled to meet this week to discuss next steps. Mr. Chan's tenure atop CJR ended after an hourlong meeting Thursday between Mr. Cobb and the magazine's editorial staff. During the meeting, roughly 10 people aired concerns about Mr. Chan's behavior, describing insults, threats to ruin their reputations, and an atmosphere of fear and hostility, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Several participants cried. Mr. Cobb announced Mr. Chan's departure in an email to CJR staff members the next day, and thanked them for their 'resilience and dedication.' In a statement posted to LinkedIn, Mr. Chan called his dismissal 'hasty, ill-considered and quite frankly baffling,' and described three 'pointed conversations' with staff members at the publication. He called them 'normal workplace interactions' and said his leadership approach at CJR had been similar to his approach at previous jobs. He declined to be interviewed for this article. Despite his short tenure, Mr. Chan had already made changes at the magazine. He resurrected and renamed CJR's most recognizable feature — a roundup of news media missteps and plaudits now known as 'Laurels and Darts.' He also outlined an editorial plan focusing on emerging topics like artificial intelligence, modern business models and the global crackdown on independent journalism. In 2021, years before Mr. Chan was named editor of CJR, he wrote a column for the publication that in many ways foreshadowed the financial challenges he would grapple with as its editor. After combing through the CJR archives, Mr. Chan said he had concluded that journalism had 'always been a tough business,' despite 'nostalgic memories of 'the good old days.'' 'The days when a top editor could focus only on stories — not digital audience, workplace culture, buyouts and layoffs, or assertive unions — are gone for good,' Mr. Chan wrote.
Chicago Tribune
11-04-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Shira Moolten
Shira Moolten covers breaking news, crime and public safety at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where she has worked since 2022. She received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 2021 and a master's degree from Columbia Journalism School in 2022. Before joining the Sun Sentinel, she freelanced for two local newspapers in Northern California, The Union and the Sierra Sun. Her investigative series on lead emissions at South Florida's general aviation airports is a finalist in the Florida Society of News Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists ' Sunshine State Awards. You can reach her at 754-971-0636.
