More than 3,050 people, including 27 affiliated with Northeastern, have signed on to a public statement dated March 11 denouncing the Trump administration’s push to combat what it calls antisemitism on college campuses by detaining international students, professors and staff members who have expressed pro-Palestine views.
The statement, titled “Not in Our Name” and written by members of the Boston branch of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff, is signed by Jewish professors, staff and students affiliated with universities nationwide. It calls on university leaders to push back on the federal government’s actions targeting higher education by devoting resources to freeing students detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents for pro-Palestine activism and stopping cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“We hold various views about Israel and Palestine, politics in the Middle East and student activism on our campuses,” the statement reads. “But we are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name — and cynical claims of antisemitism — to harass, expel, arrest or deport members of our campus communities.”
Among the signatories from Northeastern are 15 professors, four staff members, six students and two former professors. Professors and students associated with area schools including Harvard University, Boston University, Emerson College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University have also signed on.
The statement specifically names Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate student at Columbia University who was arrested by federal immigration authorities March 8 after his visa was revoked over his prominent role in pro-Palestine protests. As of March 30, at least nine people — all holding green cards or student visas — have been pursued or detained by ICE over publicly expressing pro-Palestine views, according to reporting by The New York Times.
On March 25, the crackdown reached the Boston area when Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by plainclothes ICE agents outside her off-campus apartment in Somerville. Federal officials said Ozturk’s visa had been terminated, though her attorneys say she was not notified about this; last year, she was one of four co-authors in an opinion editorial published in Tufts’ student-led newspaper that expressed pro-Palestine views.
The statement explicitly condemns President Donald Trump and his administration for justifying the crackdown by saying those who have been detained threaten national security because they publicly support Palestine. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Times that ICE found Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relished the killing of Americans.”
“We specifically reject rhetoric that caricatures our students and colleagues as ‘antisemitic terrorists’ because they advocate for Palestinian human rights and freedom,” the Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff statement reads. “This is the precise talking point President Trump and the architects of Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist agenda now deliberately wield to buttress a campaign designed to concentrate power and exert ‘existential terror’ on our institutions and our communities–in part by threatening and slashing federal funding.”
The statement also calls on universities to stop working with organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, that “smear our students and now applaud the lawless targeting of political opponents.” The Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel lobbying organization, has supported the Trump administration’s actions to crack down on what it deems to be campus antisemitism.
Several pro-Israel groups, including Betar U.S. and Canary Mission, have also encouraged the deportation of pro-Palestine activists and published the names of people who have then been targeted by federal officials.
“President Trump then exploited the Hebrew language to taunt Khalil and continues to use Jews as a shield to justify a naked attack on political dissent and university independence. All against the backdrop of Trump pardoning white supremacists and platforming neo-nazis,” the statement reads.
In addition to calling on universities to resist “the Trump administration’s open assault on our democracy,” the statement demands that institutions “democratize” governance by enabling community members to help shape universities’ response to the administration, rejecting the notion that pro-Palestinian activism is inherently anti-Jewish and defending student and faculties’ right to free speech.
“We write in hopes that our university leaders will embrace the diversity of Jewish voices, denounce the unconscionable targeting of Mahmoud Khalil and resist any other effort to politicize Jewish identity — our identity — to divide our communities, undermine our institutions and erode our democracy,” the statement reads.
