Immense panic and confusion has consumed much of our community in the wake of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) alleged, and then disproven, presence on campus.
Fear of even the possibility of deportation have also worried San Francisco communities and, reasonably so, prompted immigrant families in the Central Valley to keep their kids out of school. While not all reports of ICE presence are true, the fear is there nonetheless. The validity of those fears are underscored by the fact that ICE has repeatedly treated US citizens with hostility.
Many among us are forced to bear this fear. However, we were empowered knowing that groups like the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) and Stanford Asian American Action Committee (SAAAC) posted on social media about what to do when confronted by ICE. In that terrifying moment, students across communities opened their eyes to the reality of ICE being something to fear. The fact that this awareness transcended the boundaries of citizen and non-citizen means that students are waking up to the evils of the Trump administration on all fronts.
On immigration, President Donald Trump believes that the undocumented are “poisoning the blood of our country,” extrajudicially deports innocent migrants to an El Salvador prison camp and flagrantly defies the Supreme Court in refusing to bring an innocent, wrongfully detained man back from El Salvador.
Regarding the LGBTQIA+ community the President would have us believe that transgender people are violent savages opposed to “biological truth.” Upon this hateful and ignorant rage, he orders federal agencies to rid themselves of information on LGBTQIA+ topics, tears HIV/AIDS research to shreds and invokes the very symbol that the Nazis used to dehumanize gay people.
As for higher education, Vice President JD Vance called professors “the enemy” and universities “fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies.” This translates into White House policies of blanket attacking universities’ diversity initiatives, blacklisting scientific research that dares to venture beyond its straight white male status quo and repeatedly disappearing pro-Palestine college students.
His administration emboldens the racial profiling of US citizens, complains that researching bisexual womens’ experiences with sexual assault “harms the health of Americans” and sends federal agents after the lawyer of a pro-Palestine college student. This isn’t reasonable governance. It’s Trump’s war on the institutions, ideologies and communities that threaten his national purification agenda. The University already tows the Trump line at the expense of transgender athletes. The Stanford community must stop the institutional capitulation dead in its tracks before it surrenders us all to the White House target list.
The Trump administration resembles the Nazi playbook of ridding society of purportedly dangerous knowledge, demonizing political dissidents and peddling ‘blood poison’ rhetoric. He is a clear and present danger to the very “scientific leadership…culture of open inquiry…and horizons of opportunity for all” that University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez claim to value. Considering Trump’s historic evils and Stanford’s subservience so far, the University has to do much more than praise Harvard’s resistance efforts as “worth defending.”
It’s unfortunate that the Faculty Senate’s Institutional Statements decree restricts leadership from being the anti-Trump force for justice that our community and broader mission need. It’s given rise to what I believe to be the “institutional spinelessness” embodied by Levin’s call for Stanford to “not be a political actor.” For the safety of those they are supposed to lead, the freedoms they are supposed to cultivate and the exchanges of knowledge they are supposed to champion, Levin and Martinez must abandon institutional neutrality. Considering the resources at Stanford’s disposal, institutional resistance is the key to victory against Trump’s Fourth Reich.
Our President and Provost forcefully should condemn both Trump’s policies and their hateful roots. They should explicitly oppose Trump’s claim that immigrants are a ‘blood poison’ and ensure total safety against his ICE Gestapo. They should legally defend the pro-Palestine student heroes on the frontlines of Trump’s assault on the Constitution. They should increase funding for our LGBTQIA+ community members in and out of the classroom. Amidst escalating political pressures, I am reminded of what UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill said as he sought to boost British morale against Nazi Germany:
“Whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Trump isn’t Earth’s first strongman. Thanks to the Greatest Generation, we have a tried-and-true blueprint to follow. Stanford must fight in the classroom, fight in the courtroom and fight in the court of public opinion. History demands that Levin and Martinez do not capitulate.