On a recent sunny day in early spring, the Brown University main green space was filled with students sunbathing. It’s hard to imagine now, but this time last year, the university was a major hub of pro-Palestinian activism. Now, with the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian territories collapsing and a Brown Medicine doctor deported, students might have just as much reason to protest now as they did last year. But students and professors say the mood on campus has dramatically changed, especially among the international community.
A Palestinian-Canadian doctoral student at Brown University who asked The Public’s Radio not to use her name because she is concerned about retribution from the Trump administration described the “overwhelming atmosphere” on campus as “a climate of fear, intimidation, censorship.
International community members change travel plans to avoid deportation and detainment
The doctoral student says she never felt safe being a politically active Palestinian in the U.S., but that her fear has been growing – first since President Trump took office, and then when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian former grad student and activist from Columbia University, earlier this month. More recently, a local doctor with Brown Medicine who’s also an assistant professor at Brown University, Rasha Alawieh, was deported after trying to return to the U.S. from Lebanon.
“That definitely feels like very unstable, uncertain terrain right now,” the doctoral student said.
Following reports of these detainments and others like them, Brown University’s administration sent out a campus-wide email warning international community members about leaving the U.S. But some people at Brown were upset the advisory shied away from criticizing the Trump administration. The doctoral student said she had been planning to travel out of the country but had already called off her plans before the announcement went out.
“I was already in a space where I’m like, I should not be traveling. And good thing that I had the good wit to make that decision for myself,” she said. “The risk of me having not been let back in the country, had I gone for that conference, I might be in the same position as Dr. Alawieh.”
She said she also told her father, a naturalized Canadian citizen, that he should not make plans to visit her, particularly if he had to enter the country through Boston’s Logan Airport, where at least two legal U.S. residents, including Alawieh and German green card holder Fabian Schmidt, have been detained in recent weeks.
An undergraduate student at Brown, Rafi Ash, said he was disappointed that Brown University did not mention Rasha Alawieh’s name in their communications to the Brown community, saying he felt it was “revealing that our university is preparing to be complicit in the same way” as Columbia University, which has changed campus policies to address concerns raised by the Trump administration.
Brown University said it would not respond to questions for this story or requests for comment, citing an “exceptionally high volume of requests.”
Another international doctoral student at Brown University had concerns about leaving the country under this administration because of her status as a pro-Palestinian activist and as a transgender visa holder. The Trump administration has banned transgender athletes from competing in the U.S. with an executive order containing language that could be used to broadly target trans people applying for visas as well.
Brown faces criticism from activists and the federal government
Shortly after Brown broke out in pro-Palestinian protests in the fall of 2023, the university became the subject of a probe by the federal government: an investigation into complaints of anti-semitic and anti-Muslim harassment that was settled in part by the university agreeing to ongoing monitoring.
Then, on March 10 of this year, the Trump administration sent Brown and 59 other schools letters “warning them of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.”
Students and professors have slammed the university for its crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism on campus. During the 2023-2024 academic year, the university arrested 61 of its students for protesting after hours in administrative buildings. In response, other campus community members protested and 206 professors signed a letter encouraging the university to drop charges against the students, which it declined to do, though the students later had their charges cleared by a local judge.
The university disciplined students internally for those protests and a pro-Palestinian encampment held last spring. Some professors who were spotted at the encampment were also threatened with discipline. The university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors said at the time that infringed on free speech rights.
This past autumn, after a pro-Palestinian protest in which university trustees said students yelled offensive slurs at them, the university suspended Brown’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union called the decision a “chilling” crackdown on free speech.
A call to defend student and faculty rights
Despite Brown being under the watch of the Department of Education, professors and students at Brown say the university should stand up for its students, despite the federal climate. Last week Columbia University conceded to key Trump administration demands in order to receive $400 million in funding that the federal government had withheld. The concessions included the banning of masks used for the purposes of concealing one’s identity on campus, the hiring of 36 special officers with arrest powers, and placing some departments and initiatives involved in Middle Eastern studies under academic receivership.
Timmons Roberts, a professor in the Sociology Department at Brown University, said the school should not acquiesce to similar demands.
“I think the idea that they could hide from the Howitzer that is being pointed at Columbia and Johns Hopkins, that’s not a strategy that’s going to work in the long term,” Roberts said.
He said the crackdowns and the fear of deportations are changing the shape of universities.
“Students who have protested in the past are worried about their ability to do so in the future,” Roberts said. “Their free freedom of speech really is at stake here.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson appeared to agree. In a letter to the campus community last week Paxon said Brown “will always follow the law, including upholding our ethical and legal obligations under Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” but that it was equally committed to protecting freedom of speech and expression. If university administrators experienced “encroachment” on those freedoms, Paxson wrote, they would fight back.
“If Brown faced such actions directly impacting our ability to perform essential academic and operational functions, we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms, and true to our values, we would do so with integrity and respect,” Paxson said.
Despite Paxson’s attempted reassurances, many Brown University professors and students still feel more comfortable protesting off-campus than on-campus during this political climate.
Last week, Brown professors and students turned out at the Rhode Island Statehouse to protest Dr. Alawieh’s deportation. A similar rally was held in downtown Providence this past weekend to protest federal funding cuts.
But with many students returning from Spring break next week, undergraduate student activists like Rafi Ash say they’re hoping students will start speaking out more against the Trump administration and their school. He said crackdowns on student protestors are galvanizing more students already. He says he’s starting to see a renewed uptick in student activism on Brown’s campus.
“What builds our power is our solidarity with one another,” Ash said. “And, you know, I think in some ways that’s been true this whole time, but it’s clearer than ever now.”
