San Diego college faculty and students say they fear the Trump administration’s plans to investigate UC San Diego and other universities, and its attempts elsewhere to deport student activists and assert control over academic programs, mark the start of a broader erosion of civil and human rights.
Last weekend, federal agents detained and tried to deport a Columbia University student for his role organizing pro-Palestinian protests. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education said it was investigating 60 universities for alleged antisemitism amid such protests. And on Thursday, the Trump administration threatened to withhold all future funding from Columbia unless it cedes control of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department to the government, on top of other demands, and intensified an ongoing effort to deport student protesters.
To many academics, students and free-speech advocates in San Diego and beyond, more than individual free speech is at stake. They say such moves by President Donald Trump and his administration represent an attack on everyone’s academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
They particularly worry such arrests and other crackdowns may soon come to UC San Diego, which is among the universities the Trump administration says it is investigating over allegations of antisemitism. And some of them worry about how the university will respond.
“This is what fascist regimes do, and it’s kind of a code red for our universities,” said Adam Aron, a psychology professor at UC San Diego who is Jewish. “This is maybe the beginning if we don’t stand up and oppose this.”
To David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, what was done to Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is “one of the hugest threats to free speech in my lifetime.”
Khalil, 30, a lawful permanent resident and a leader of Columbia’s student protests against support of Israel over the war in Gaza, was arrested last weekend at his apartment building after the State Department moved to revoke his green card because of his activism.
Khalil has sued the Trump administration in New York federal court, and a judge has temporarily halted his deportation pending the lawsuit.
“All he did was speak,” said Sabrina, a Palestinian UCSD student and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine who asked to be identified by her first name for fear of retaliation by the university. “The fact that this is what it’s come to is super, super scary, because it means nobody can say anything unless it aligns with what the president allows — which is not free speech at all.”
Federal officials argue Khalil’s activism is antisemitic and amounts to support of Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization, and Trump has vowed to arrest more college students on similar grounds. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” he wrote on his social media platform Monday.
Loy said he has seen no evidence from officials that Khalil materially supported Hamas or acted criminally. The First Amendment protects the free speech of everyone in America, regardless of immigration status, he noted.
If the government is trying to deport somebody for their views, Loy said, that “is a terrifying thing they’re trying to accomplish.”
“This is not a power we want the government to have, whatever your political position is.”
He said Trump was also overstepping federal authority with his demands to Columbia, among them that the school abolish its current student disciplinary process, change its admissions and recruiting processes and consent to federal control of the school’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies.
“Nothing in those federal laws, nothing in the Constitution, empowers the government to essentially hijack and micromanage the university’s entire operations,” Loy said. “It certainly does not allow the government to dictate to universities what to teach and how. That is the essence of freedom of speech.”
What constitutes antisemitism?
Many Jewish faculty and students around the country, including in San Diego, object to what they say is Trump’s use of antisemitism as a pretext to deport people for exercising their rights and to crack down on academic freedom.
They say Trump and others, including some leading Jewish organizations, falsely equate criticisms of Israel and its war in Gaza with antisemitism.
More than 1,300 Jewish faculty, staff and students nationwide — including about two dozen in San Diego — have signed a statement condemning Khalil’s arrest and calling on university leaders to demand his release, defend students’ free speech and refuse to cooperate voluntarily with immigration enforcement.
One of those signatories is Jonathan Graubart, a San Diego State professor who studies the diversity of views within the Jewish community about Israel and antisemitism.
“If you’re politicizing the charge of antisemitism to also chill critical discussion of Israel, then I’m worried,” Graubart said. “It cheapens the legitimate struggle against antisemitism.”
Max, a San Diego State student and a member of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine who asked to be identified by his first name for fear of harassment, said that as a Jew, he hasn’t experienced antisemitism in pro-Palestinian protests — but he has been harassed by fellow Jews who have denied his own Jewish identity.
“Critiquing a state is different from critiquing an entire ethnicity,” Max said. “We have no issue critiquing other countries.”
Some larger Jewish organizations that support Israel and have criticized pro-Palestinian protesters have received the Trump administration’s recent actions with varying degrees of support. Antisemitism on college campuses is a real problem that leaves Jewish students unsafe, they say, and they express cautious optimism about efforts to combat it.
Karen Parry, the executive director of Hillel San Diego, has previously raised concerns about antisemitism in San Diego.
She told The San Diego Union-Tribune in the first weeks of the Gaza protests that Jewish students didn’t feel safe at UCSD. She separately wrote in an earlier op-ed about antisemitic incidents on local campuses, including swastikas found on walls. “These are all serious and ugly hate crimes that directly impact the entire university,” she wrote at the time.
“UC San Diego must be a safe and welcoming campus for all students, including Jewish students,” Parry told the Union-Tribune this week, when asked about the federal investigation of UCSD. “We hope this message from the U.S. Department of Education, along with other initiatives already underway at UCSD, will productively improve the campus culture for Jewish students.”
The Anti-Defamation League, a national organization that works to combat antisemitism and has accused pro-Palestinian protesters of fostering it and of being anti-Israel, expressed overall support for Khalil’s arrest on X last week.
“We appreciate the Trump administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism — and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions,” it wrote. But it added that any deportation action “obviously” must be undertaken with proper due process.
‘Fearful to express ourselves’
A UC San Diego spokesperson initially declined to comment on the federal investigation or to respond to questions following Khalil’s arrest, instead deferring to the systemwide UC Office of the President. The UC campuses of Davis, Santa Barbara and Berkeley were also identified for federal investigation.
“We want to be clear: The University of California is unwavering in its commitment to combating antisemitism and protecting the civil rights of all our students, faculty, staff and visitors,” a UC spokesperson said in an email. “We continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment for everyone in the university community.”
The spokesperson also referred to UC’s resources advising about immigration enforcement and its affirmation of support for undocumented students.
After further pressing by the Union-Tribune, a UCSD spokesperson said in an email that the university “takes very seriously its obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to provide an educational environment free from harassment and discrimination.”
UCSD declined to answer the Union-Tribune’s questions about what steps it would take, if any, to comply with the Department of Education’s warning of enforcement or how it would respond to potential future attempts by federal agents to remove students.
The university has remained largely quiet recently when asked about other federal uncertainties it faces, too.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal grants to and contracts with Columbia, citing its handling of antisemitism allegations, before it issued its new list of demands as preconditions for future funding.
Like Columbia, UC San Diego could stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars it receives from the federal government in grants and contracts for research, student financial aid and more.
The letter the Department of Education sent to UCSD last week warns that such funding could be jeopardized based upon how the school responds to conduct the administration considers antisemitic harassment.
“Put simply, failure to take sufficient measures to address antisemitic harassment based on shared ancestry violates Title VI,” the letter says. “Schools that allow illegal activities and harassment that result in Jewish students losing equal access to school facilities are in violation of Title VI and will be subject to potential loss of federal funding.”
Before it received that letter, UCSD was already bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal funding cuts. It has frozen hiring for faculty, and for some staff. And it has stopped guaranteeing full funding for its incoming graduate students.
“I understand that UCSD administration is now being terrified and intimidated by losing more federal funding if they don’t do X, Y, Z. But when’s this going to end?” Aron said. “The right thing to do is to stand up in defense of free speech and academic freedom, and help create a campus where we don’t feel fearful to express ourselves.”
Campus distrust
Some San Diego students and faculty who supported the pro-Palestinian protests aren’t confident their universities will stand up for their free speech if put to the test, based on how they responded to protests last year.
Last May, UCSD called in law enforcement to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and arrest dozens of students. Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said it violated campus policy and had become a safety hazard.
In the aftermath, administrators enacted dozens of new rules and restrictions on how protests can be conducted on campus, outlined in so-called “time, place and manner” policies.
The new rules regulate, among other things, where protests can be held and how loud they can be and forbid protesters from wearing masks. For protests with more than 75 people, organizers must get liability insurance and prior university approval. Anyone who breaks the rules may face arrest, criminal charges, university disciplinary action and sanctions.
A UCSD spokesperson said in an email that the university “is fully committed to upholding the constitutional right to free expression” and supports and encourages peaceful protest. It says it solicited feedback on the policies from the entire campus and is now reviewing those comments.
UCSD says it expanded its rules governing protests to comply with an August order from UC President Michael Drake.
That order called for campus policies to prohibit five things: camping, unauthorized structures, blocking of people’s movement, masking to conceal identity and the refusal to reveal one’s identity. UCSD’s updates added many regulations beyond those five.
Faculty said their Academic Senate was not consulted for feedback before administrators instituted the rules — technically interim policies that have been in effect since October.
Some students and faculty at UCSD and other local colleges say those restrictions, combined with the more recent news of Khalil’s arrest, have helped build a climate of fear and chilled free speech on campus.
Some are now afraid to participate in protests for fear of punishment or surveillance by their university. Others are more careful about what they post on social media and even what they send via university email accounts.
“We feel like every move is being closely watched,” Max said.
If federal officers come to campus
If federal immigration officers show up on campus, the UC says that university police officers will not help them enforce immigration laws unless legally required to do so. But the university generally cannot prevent federal immigration officers from coming onto university property.
Federal immigration officers cannot legally enter a student’s home, including university housing, without consent unless they specifically have a criminal search or arrest warrant. If they have only a civil or administrative warrant, the UC says they cannot enter housing or limited-access spaces on campus, such as areas restricted by keycard, without consent.
UCSD says on its website that if anyone learns that an immigration officer is entering campus to enforce a federal immigration order, they should call UCSD police at 858-534-4357 as soon as possible.
The university also says any students, faculty or staff who come into contact with an immigration officer enforcing a federal immigration order should refer the officer to UCSD’s legal office at WarrantQuestions@ucsd.edu to verify the legality of the warrant or court order.
The university also says on its website that students in need of emergency legal help who are detained by ICE or at risk of deportation can call the university’s in-house immigration attorney at 530-219-8856.
Students can contact UCSD’s Undocumented Student Services at 858-822-6916 or email undoc@ucsd.edu if they become subject to an immigration order or inquiry on campus. Faculty and staff can call UCSD’s International Faculty & Scholars Office at 858-246-1448 or email ischolars@ucsd.edu.
The UC also says students can get free legal advice relating to their immigration status by contacting the UC Undocumented Legal Services Center at 530-752-7996 or emailing ucimm@law.ucdavis.edu.
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