University president on student visas and campus protests
(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying "all U.S. embassies should not schedule any new student visa application appointments at this time."
Counselors who work with foreign students eager to attend college in the U.S. are advising them to purge their social media accounts of posts that could attract the attention of U.S. State Department officials.
"Any new student who comes on board, especially an international student who doesn't have a U.S. passport, we would be going through their social media with them and talk to them about what they are saying on Snapchat, in group chats," said Kat Cohen, founder and CEO of IvyWise, an educational consultancy firm for college admissions. "Because, if the information comes off as being radical or anti-American in some way, it is not going to help them."
The focus on international students' online profiles follows a new push by the Trump administration to scrutinize social media accounts as part of the evaluation process for student visa applications. In a cable dated May 27 and obtained by CBS News, the State Department said it was preparing to expand social media screening and vetting. The agency did not specify exactly what type of content it would be looking for.
"President Trump will always put the safety of Americans first, and it is a privilege, not a right, to study in the United States," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. "Enhanced social media vetting is a commonsense measure that will help ensure that guests in our country are not planning to harm Americans, which is a national security priority."
The new vetting measures build upon an April statement from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announcing that the agency will be taking into account "antisemitic activity on social media" as "grounds for denying immigration benefit requests."
When asked if he was concerned about international students not being able to go back to school in September, Roth said, "I'm very concerned, not only about Wesleyan, but about higher education in the United States."
"One of the great things about our system of education is that it attracts people from all over the world who want to come to America to learn. And while they're here learning, they learn about our country, our values, our freedoms. And this is really an act of intimidation to scare schools into toeing the line of the current administration. It really has nothing to do with national security or with anti-Semitism. This heightened scrutiny is meant to instill fear on college campuses, and I'm afraid it is working," he added.
During the interview, Brennan and Roth talked about Harvard, Columbia and Brown having their federal funding revoked because of their policies, with the heads of the universities afraid to speak out. When asked why he's not afraid to speak out, Roth said:
"Oh, I am. I'm afraid too. But I just find it extraordinary that Americans are afraid to speak out, especially people who, you know, run colleges, universities. Why...this is a free country. I've been saying it my whole life. I used to tell my parents that when I didn't want to do something, I would say it's a free country. And this idea that we're supposed to actually conform to the ideologies in the White House, it's not just bad for Harvard or for Wesleyan, it's bad for the whole country because journalists are being intimidated, law firms are being intimidated, churches, synagogues and mosques will be next. We have to defend our freedoms. And when we bring international students here, what they experience is what it's like to live in a free country, and we can't let the president change the atmosphere so that people come here and are afraid to speak out."
Later in the interview, Brennan and Roth talked about protests around college campuses regarding the Israel-Hamas War, with Brennan asking if Roth considers them to be antisemitic or anti-Jewish, to which Roth responded saying:
"Oh no, certainly not by definition. There are lots of examples of antisemitism around the country, some of them are on college campuses. They're reprehensible. When Jewish students are intimidated or afraid to practice their religion on campus, or are yelled at or...it's horrible. But at Wesleyan and in many schools, the percentage of Jews protesting for Palestinians was roughly the same as the percentage of Jews on the campus generally. The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities, I think, is a complete charade. It's just an excuse for getting the universities to conform. We need to stamp out antisemitism. Those two young people just murdered because they were Jewish in Washington, that's a great example of how violence breeds violence. But the attack on universities is not an attempt to defend Jews. On the contrary, I think more Jews will be hurt by these attacks than helped."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with Roth, click here.
