Is America really so vulnerable that foreign college students are going to bring us down?
The great thing about liberal democracy: it’s strong enough to withstand free speech, even speech you don't like
In the weeks since the Trump Administration's unlawful and anti-American detention of foreign college students because of their speech, a common refrain has been echoed by figures on the MAGA right, many of whom spent the last few years bleating about the importance of free speech on leftist college campuses. It goes something like this: if you come to America as a guest, to go to school, and you choose to criticize America during your time here, you forfeit your right to be in America. America cannot countenance within its borders the presence of foreigners critiquing our government, our foreign policy, or our ally in Israel. National security and the war in Gaza depends upon rooting out these critical voices, especially if they are foreigners.
In a largely infuriating conversation between MAGA apologist Douglas Murray and host Andrew Sullivan on the Dishcast last week - during which Murray mostly obfuscated and used the straw-man specter of foreign-born student-terrorists undermining America from their dorms on Columbia's campus in order to avoid grappling with the real injustice done to students like Rumeysa Ozturk and Yunseo Chung - this argument was put forth. Debating the merits of speech on campuses, he said, "I would not expect that if I decided I wanted to go and live in Paris, and decided I wanted to be a Parisian student, I would not expect to spend a significant amount of my time trying to smash up the campus and call for the overthrow of the French government or anything else. And I think if they did, the French government should give me the heave-ho."
Notice first the straw man argument - that foreign students are overwhelmingly "trying to smash up the campus" or that they are calling for the overthrow of the government. Murray is trying to distract from what students like Ozturk actually did: wrote op-eds against the genocide occurring Gaza, attended protests on campus, took part in sit-ins, spoke out for a political position they believe in. He wants to only focus on the worst possible actors, because most of the actual examples are so benign and sympathetic.
Beyond that, though, the tactic of Murray and others to exaggerate and radicalize the actions of these students is really an attempt to distract us from the fact that the students' due process was violated, that we actually have no idea what law they broke or what they are being charged with, because none of them got a day in court, but instead were kidnapped off the street and sent thousands of miles away to a holding facility in another state without even being given their Constitutionally-protected right to a hearing, to be told what they were being charged with and to offer some rebuttal, defense, or denial. Perhaps they broke the law in some way; perhaps their visa status should be up for review. In the case Khalil Muhammad at least, these arguments seems reasonable. But we will never know, because the Administration never made a case in court one way or the other. They simply asserted their view, seized Mr. Muhammad, and trampled all over our Constitution in the process, cheapening the rights not just of Mr. Muhammad, but of you and I as well.
Beyond all that, however, what I'm really struck by in this rhetorical strategy used by MAGA defenders is the apparent fragility they ascribe to the United States, to our foreign policy, and to our judicial processes. Is the United States really at risk due to the words and actions of foreign students, to the extent that not only must they be stopped, but that our norms of due process must be dismantled to protect ourselves? Our we really so weak? If we are, then we have bigger problems that Rumeysa Ozturk.
For a group of people who spend so much time going on and on about the exceptionalism of America, they sure don't seem to believe in it very much.
Perhaps another country - France, or Hungary, or Russia, or China - would not allow foreign students to engage in such speech and action. In some of those places, that is definitely the case. But, the example of other nations on the issue of free speech and political protest should not be the lodestar for our country. American freedoms and rights are durable enough to withstand even the most odious of speech. America can withstand the protests of Khalil Muhammad, the sit-ins of Yunseo Chung, the op-eds of Rumeysa Ozturk. We should be bigger than other nations on an issue like speech. We should have the confidence of our convictions, and of our Constitutional rights. We should allow speech we don't like to happen, and hold our heads above it, knowing that we have heard worse, and come through stronger for it.
America is not existentially threatened by foreign students exercising their free speech on campus. America is not under attack when someone disagrees with our foreign policy, or when they call us out on our moral shortcomings. In fact, America is made stronger, better, more free, when we allow foreign born students to come here, learn at our universities, and most importantly, absorb the values of free speech and political dissent, and then take those values back home with them. That strengthens the prospects for democracy and human rights around the globe. We shouldn’t believe ourselves so fragile and weak that we would need to act otherwise.