Trump’s escalation of censorship and retaliation is terrifying. The groundwork for it was prepared years in advance.
Source: Truthout
“It’s a chilling feeling,” Tariq explains to me. “Here at Yale, immigration authorities have revoked at least four students’ visas so far.”
Tariq Khan is an interdisciplinary historian and lecturer at Yale University. “A lot of students are scared,” he explains. “I have international students in my classes. They’re really worried that their visas might be revoked. The Trump administration’s strategy has been to create uncertainty and fear. They want to traumatize people and put people in a state of anxiety.”
Tariq has lost his own job due to budgeting uncertainty provoked by the Trump administration’s funding cuts, but has been hired temporarily in another department for the next academic year. “I teach exactly the things the MAGA far right doesn’t want, relating to race and class and gender.”
Trump has sent ultimatums to Columbia and Harvard; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is revoking visas and hunting down students for protesting genocide; and Elon Musk’s DOGE team has created lists of prohibited words that federal agencies and funding recipients are forced to abide by.
