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The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘My stomach just dropped': foreign students in panicked limbo as Trump cancels visa interviews
Students around the world who were gearing up to study in the United States this fall face growing uncertainty after the Trump administration temporarily halted student visa appointments this week. On Tuesday, a state department directive ordered US embassies globally to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students while it prepares to implement expanded social media screening for all international visa applicants. While interview appointments that were already scheduled can proceed, the announcement sparked panic among students who have yet to secure interviews. Students who spoke with the Guardian expressed anxiety over delays in visa processing that could jeopardize scholarships, on-campus housing, their ability to start classes on time – and their very academic futures. 'My stomach just dropped,' said Oliver Cropley, 27, a student at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, who is meant to attend the University of Kansas beginning this August for a year abroad. The directive came amid a series of recent policy shifts targeting international students at US universities. This week, the Trump administration issued new measures targeting Chinese students, announcing it would focus on the visas of those studying in 'critical fields' and of students with ties to the Chinese Communist party, and implement heightened scrutiny for all future applicants from China and Hong Kong. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it would immediately ban Harvard University from enrolling international students, forcing the university's international student body to either transfer or leave the country. A federal judge blocked that effort on Thursday, but its long-term outcome remains uncertain. The changes have left many international students who are planning to come to the US for the 2025-2026 academic year scrambling and in limbo. Cropley said that he paid all of the application fees for the US visa including the last administrative fee last week to schedule his visa interview, but he has been unable to schedule it or reach anyone at the US embassy. 'I was looking forward to Kansas. I love America, the wildlife, the culture,' Cropley said 'It has demoralized me,' Cropley said. 'It's a stressful enough process, and then to get this sort of knockback at this stage … I'm supposed to be there on August 4.' The scholarship he received to go study in the US is also now in flux, he said, as it is contingent on him traveling. As he awaits updates from the US embassy, Cropley said he is exploring his options – inquiring about the possibility of re-enrolling at his home university in the UK and completing the year there instead of in the US. But he said 'it's quite late' to be picking classes and modules and finding accommodation. 'I'm sort of stuck in between the two different universities with no guarantee of getting into either,' Cropley said. 'Essentially, it's just a waiting game.' Another UK student, who has been accepted to Harvard for the fall, told the Guardian that they were in 'disbelief' over the administration's attempt to block Harvard from enrolling international students. 'In your head, you have the next kind of five years knowing where you'll be, and then suddenly, overnight, that changes,' they said, speaking anonymously out of fear their comments could affect their visa approval The student said that their visa interview was already scheduled when the directive was issued, so they hope their interview is still going ahead. The recent decisions by the Trump administration 'raise a lot of uncertainty for the future', they said, adding that the situation at Harvard feels 'very fragile'. 'We may still be able to go, but at any moment, that could change,' they said. 'And if you're going to this place, to do work, but your mind is consumed with a fear of how grounded you can be, will things change, that's also difficult to deal with.' Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion They said that if they get their visa, they still plan on enrolling at Harvard. The Guardian last week invited scholars in the US and students poised to study in the US to share their experiences navigating the Trump administration's recent actions targeting higher education. More than 100 people responded, many saying they were reconsidering their academic future in the country. Several international students who wrote in declined follow-up interviews with the Guardian, citing fear of repercussions. Alfred Williamson, a Harvard undergraduate from Wales in Denmark for the summer, told Reuters this week that he fears he may not be able to return to the US. 'We're being used like pawns in the game that we have no control of,' he said. 'We're being caught in this crossfire between the White House and Harvard, and it feels incredibly dehumanising.' Some universities have advised students who are already enrolled not to leave the US for the summer in case they won't be allowed back. There are currently more than 1.1 million international students in the US, comprising about 6% of the US higher education population, according to the Institute of International Education. They typically pay two to three times the tuition of domestic students, and for the 2023-2024 academic year international students contributed $43.8bn to the US economy, according to Nafsa. In a court filing on Wednesday as part of a Harvard lawsuit against the Trump administration's efforts to ban international students at the school, Maureen Martin, Harvard's director of immigration services, described 'profound fear, concern, and confusion' among students and faculty as a result of the action. Faculty and administrators, she said, have been 'inundated' with inquiries from current international students about their status and options, and several foreign consulates in the US have contacted the university seeking clarity on how the policy affects their nationals who are enrolled. Martin said that many international students are experiencing 'significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies'. Some, she said, are avoiding graduation ceremonies for fear of immigration action, while others have canceled travel plans due to concerns they might not be allowed back into the US. 'Too many international students to count' have inquired about the possibility of transferring to another institution, she said. Martin said that several current Harvard visa holders have also faced increased scrutiny at airports. The Guardian reached out for comment to a number of universities with large foreign student populations. Most said they were monitoring the situation and would do what they could to support their students. 'We have a robust set of resources for our incoming and current international students, as well as contingency plans for those who might experience disruptions to their learning,' said Renata Nyul, the vice-president for communications at Northeastern University. A spokesperson for Arizona State University, which has more than 17,000 international students, said that the university is 'monitoring the situation closely and remains committed to fully supporting all international students in completing their degree programs'.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Five years later, the class of 2020 reflects on a graduation wrecked by COVID-19
Caroline McCray, then a senior at the University of Kansas, poses for a photo with her then-boyfriend Alex Kittoe who became her husband last week during a family celebration of her graduation in May 2020. (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector) Five years ago today, University of Kansas senior Caroline McCray woke up and connected through the internet to a remote yoga class. She practiced the poses in her mom's kitchen, family dogs at her feet. For McCray, May 16, 2020, was a typical Saturday in Fairway during the COVID-19 lockdown. She finished her yoga class and saw something unusual out the front window of her home. Foot-high letters in the front yard read 'YAY LELA!' along with stars and a smiley face wearing a graduation cap. A celebration coordinated by her mom also featured McCray's sister and boyfriend, plus mimosas during an outdoor brunch that morning. McCray posted photos from the day on Instagram. The caption: 'this year's graduation ceremony consists of yoga clothes and dogs.' 'I think as a 21-year-old college student at the time, I was still kind of sad not to be with my friends,' McCray said this week. 'But I only have good memories from the morning, and looking back on it now, those are still the three most important people to me.' If the pandemic had not forced the closure of campuses at KU and hundreds of other universities, the weekend of May 16, 2020 would have been a raucous and jam-packed graduation weekend. Instead, the class of 2020 — from kindergarten to PhD graduates — celebrated remotely and modestly. If not for the pandemic, McCray and thousands of fellow KU students would have descended the 'Hill' on the Lawrence campus from the Memorial Campanile to the football stadium. Prospective Jayhawks often hear about the campanile tradition during campus tours, before they even apply to KU. 'If you walk under the bell tower,' they are told about the superstition, 'you won't graduate on time. Or maybe never graduate.' As a KU instructor, I have been thinking about the class of 2020 this week on the five-year anniversary of their not-so-graduation ceremony. In many ways, this weekend's graduates, the class of 2025, will have the commencement that the class of 2020 envisioned. Putting on make-up and fine tuning your hair with your roommates. Gathering on Jayhawk Boulevard and running into four years' worth of friends. Snapping pictures by (or in) the Chi Omega fountain. Popping open champagne with whoops and cheers. Spending one last night at your favorite Mass Street bar. Curious about how the canceled in-person graduation looked to the Class of 2020 with the distance of five years, I interviewed students from my documentary class held that 2020 spring semester. The class, like graduation itself, ended with a thud. We had arranged to tag along with Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas as he managed the city and taught at the KU Law School. The pandemic mangled our plans for that documentary project. The mayor's office couldn't invite a student-journalist film crew to tag along as the city hunkered down. Students in the class pivoted to creating podcasts about fellow students, asking them about their pandemic realities. Emily Beckman, who earned bachelor's degrees in journalism and women, gender and sexuality, said this week that those interviews stuck with her. 'I would check in with four students regularly to hear how they were navigating lockdown,' Beckman said. 'There was something so human about knowing we were all moving through a time of major uncertainty and isolation together.' Riley Wilson, who came to KU after graduating from Wamego High School and is now a lawyer in Texas, remembers returning to campus in June, a month after graduation because there was no in-person option. 'We went to campus later with just me and my family,' Wilson said. 'I had my graduation stuff on, and my mom took pictures of me, and I did get one in the bell tower. I got to walk through the bell tower, but instead of it being with all my friends, it was with my family. So it was just a very different experience.' Five years later, she had forgotten about the bell tower tradition until it came up in our interview. 'Had graduation happened the way I thought it was going to, (the bell tower) would have been one of the first things that I would talk about with anyone,' Wilson said, 'You finally get to walk through the bell tower and signify that you're graduated.' In April 2020, the news that in-person graduation was canceled wasn't a surprise to Wilson and McCray. Both agree that it was the safest choice, especially because traveling and flying was seen as particularly risky. 'Once other schools started canceling, I had the feeling that it was going to happen and definitely was bummed,' McCray said. 'I think at that point, I knew that my family wasn't going to be in town anyways. So I guess I wasn't super shocked at that point, just because I saw it coming.' Five years later, she describes the canceled graduation as feeling like 'loose ends.' Graduation 'was supposed to be like our last celebration of college,' McCray said. 'No one was mad or upset about having some classes online. But (graduation) was definitely more of a celebration that we didn't get to have.' Wilson's brother was graduating high school the same weekend, and she remembers her family bracing for the possibility of a hectic weekend. 'I remember thinking that that was going to be really exciting and fun too, because we could do that together and have everybody there that we wanted to be surrounded by, all in one place for a weekend full of celebration and fun things,' Wilson said. On commencement weekend 2020, the university offered a video that graduates could stream online in place of the in-person ceremony. The 35-minute video presented congratulations from men's basketball coach Bill Self, actor Rob Riggle and assorted university faculty. It also provided a performance of the alma mater, 'Crimson and the Blue,' lyrics laid over campus scenery. 'I remember being bummed that it was on YouTube,' Wilson said. 'I mean, I knew that there was nothing else that the university could do. They were doing the best that they could, given the fact that we can't gather together.' Watching the commencement video today, it's perhaps more emotional than in 2020. The chorus of the 'Rock Chalk,' chanted by a Brady-Bunch screen-collage of students, nearly brought me to tears while rewatching it this week. Plus, the script addresses the sadness of an empty campus in an honest way. 'For so many of us, the distance on our minds was not the one that we kept from each other, but the one from a campanile to a stadium full of friends and family,' the video narrates over footage of student life. 'It can be easy to dwell on the steps that you won't take, but pause now to think of the strides you've made.' The video may work better as an emotional time capsule today than it did in 2020 as a huzzah for new graduates. Beckman watched that video on commencement day and also attended the in-person graduation the next year, because KU allowed 2020 graduates to attend in May 2021. 'It felt so special to walk down the hill and celebrate my time at KU in a meaningful way, with family in attendance,' Beckman said. As Wilson and McCray see it now, other ripple effects from the pandemic were far more disruptive and consequential than the graduation decision. As a new graduate, McCray hoped to find a job with a professional sports team in the summer of 2020. She was on the right trajectory after working for Sporting Kansas City and a Kansas City radio station. The pandemic scrambled that. Because sports teams couldn't sell tickets to in-person events, they laid off employees rather than hiring new ones like McCray. 'After a year, I said, 'Okay, you know, maybe this isn't happening,'' McCray said. 'COVID in general at the time did make a very, very significant impact on my career. I didn't end up doing what I always thought I was going to do because of it.' McCray now works from Denver in the travel industry, a job that she loves for its flexibility. Just a few days ago, she married that boyfriend from her senior year — the one who made the road trip to share brunch with her. Wilson remembers how difficult the pandemic was on college friendships, like the one she had with her senior year roommate. One day you were living together. The next day you didn't see one another at all. 'Someone who I had lived with for four years was now like … I didn't live with her anymore, and all our stuff was still at our town home,' Wilson said, remembering of her trip back to campus to move out. 'We were just overnight separated. She had to go back to St. Louis, and I had to go back to Wamego. Someone who I had lived my life with for the past four years — we were just separated.' Three years after moving out of that town home, Wilson graduated from law school. That ceremony showed her what she had missed in 2020. 'Being able to be there with your classmates, all in the same place, and just really excited and nervous all together,' Wilson recalls. 'And then you get to walk out into the auditorium and you see the thousands of people around you there to support everyone. I think that is what makes it so special.' Wilson is reciting a sacred graduation recipe: a campus you cherish, the people you love and a coveted diploma. Graduations make memories. So, to the class of 2025 from the class of 2020: Don't take this weekend's days of celebration for granted.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Kansas antisemitism law takes aim at free speech, does nothing to protect Jewish people
Rabbi Moti Rieber (right) sits beside author and activist Mark McCormick at a March 25, 2025, Statehouse hearing. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) In February, I testified against House Bill 2299, a bill to put the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism into statute, focused on university campuses and punishable by prosecution by the state's attorney general, Kris Kobach. A watered-down version (Senate Bill 44), which took out most of the enforcement provisions, passed at the end of the session. Both versions were aimed squarely at the University of Kansas, which had a pro-Palestinian encampment last year and which according to some has become a hotbed of antisemitism. The new law focuses on protest (no masks used 'to harass Jewish students') and curriculum (banning 'incorporating or allowing funding of antisemitic curriculum or activities in any domestic or study abroad programs or classes'). Leaving aside the fact that it is impossible to study Western history and not encounter antisemitism, this language is extremely broad and could and probably would be used to suppress pro-Palestinian speech by students, visiting speakers, or in Muslim or Arab studies classes. This points to the main problem with the IHRA definition of antisemitism: it equates anti-Zionism — opposition to Israel's actions or even Israel itself — with antisemitism, a racialized hatred of Jewish people. This is a popular position among traditional Jewish communal organizations. Kansas City's JCRB/AJC testified in favor of the original bill, which I remind you would have allowed Kobach to identify and prosecute 'antisemitism.' Anti-Zionism and antisemitism can and do overlap — people could hide their antisemitism behind expressions of anti-Zionism, for instance, or they can accuse random Jews of being responsible for Israel's actions — but they are not the same. The many young Jews who took part in campus protests last year can attest to that. (For the rest of this column I will refer to politicized accusations of antisemitism as 'antisemitism.' Actual antisemitism — hatred of Jews — will remain without quotation marks.) The bill raised two questions. First, why didn't it address the explosion of antisemitism from the political right, from the poisonous discourse on the former Twitter to neo-Nazis at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot (now pardoned, of course) to white supremacists in close proximity, or even in the Trump administration (including, of course, Donald Trump himself). Second, why is antisemitism on college campuses so unique and terrible that it requires special legislation addressing it, when allowing anti-Black racism on college campuses is practically a MAGA platform plank? This question was raised on the floor of the House, but it wasn't answered. Criminalizing speech critical of Israel in this way has become a significant problem. Campus protests were suppressed last year. Since the start of the second Trump term, people who have criticized Israel's actions in Gaza — without necessarily attacking Israel's 'right to exist' — have been arrested and set for deportation for political speech, a clear violation of the First Amendment. Two of the most prominent examples are Columbia University's Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestine protests there, and Tufts University's Rumeysa Ozturk, who appears to have only co-written an op-ed in a student newspaper. Both columns and protests are political speech protected by the First Amendment. Yes, even for noncitizens. There is no evidence that either of these people have been involved in any actual Jew-hatred, and as I will explain in a moment, protesting Israel's actions in Gaza is justifiable. Accusations of rampant 'antisemitism' in universities is also the cudgel Trump is using to attack their funding and governance. This crackdown is largely a project of the Christian right, as spelled out in the Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, which focuses exclusively on antisemitism on the left and advocates for increased censorship and suppression of protest. 'Antisemitism' has become today's equivalent of McCarthy-era 'communism' — the accusation itself is condemnatory. No further evidence (or thought) is needed. That traditional Jewish communal organizations — particularly the Anti-Defamation League and JCRB/AJC — have allied themselves with this effort in the name of protecting Israel should be an embarrassment. This politicization of 'antisemitism' doesn't do Jews any favors. Not only have we consistently voted, by large majorities, for Democrats, but our very place in this society is built on the foundation of liberal democracy, especially freedom of expression and religion. Jews have prioritized Bill of Rights protections for more than 100 years, including helping found the ACLU. It is a cruel irony indeed that these pillars of Jewish freedom in American society are being dismantled in the name of protecting Jews. To which I say, no thanks. Fortunately it appears that (some) people are catching on to the ruse: Several of the main liberal Jewish denominational bodies recently issued a joint statement 'rejecting the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy.' It's a good statement, and it doesn't assume the legitimacy of the 'universities are hotbeds of antisemitism' framing. Other, similar statements have been released. But as the 'Antisemitism Awareness Act' working its way through the U.S. Congress makes clear, this problem will get worse before it gets better. In a moment that pulled back the curtain, a clause was added to that bill that would protect the 'right' to say that 'the Jews' killed Jesus — a calumny that has caused untold injury and death to Jews throughout history and is the very definition of actual antisemitic speech. (Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, R-MAGA, sounded sympathetic last year.) To be clear: People are criticizing Israel because it is committing significant human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and especially Gaza, and not out of Jew-hatred. Jews are involved in every level of the Palestinian solidarity movement, including encampments. There are already laws to protect people from harassment and violence; Jews don't require special protection. Claiming otherwise has real consequences for real people, including dividing Jews between 'good Jews' who support Israel's actions (and Trump) and 'bad Jews' who don't and should be suppressed. Where antisemitism exists on the left and in the pro-Palestine movement, it should be criticized and condemned, but we shouldn't deploy state power to slay dragons that aren't really there. Policing Trumped-up, politicized charges of 'antisemitism' is something that Christian nationalists, including Kobach and the Heritage Foundation, should not be empowered to do. Rabbi Moti Rieber is executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, a statewide, multifaith issue-advocacy organization that works on a variety of social, economic and climate justice issues. He writes this column in his private capacity. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
