April 16, 2025
The Trump administration has intensified its attacks on international faculty and students: refusing scholars entry into the country due to their political viewpoints, stripping students of their legal status and revoking visas, and seizing students in preparation for deportation, including in Ohio. These actions, brazen attacks on the First Amendment and the right to learn, have proceeded without any semblance of due process. They strike at the heart of academic freedom and the international community of scholars.
FAM, AAUP-AFT strongly and unequivocally condemns this targeting of international students and scholars. We stand with our international students and colleagues.
We call on Miami University to take concrete steps to support students and scholars at risk by doing the following:
- not turn over personal student information in response to Title VI investigations (as the AAUP has already urged in a public letter to the offices of general counsels).
- make a clear commitment to avoid voluntary cooperation or information sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agencies charged with facilitating deportation or other forms of immigration enforcement.
- make a clear commitment to not comply with any recommendations to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” received pursuant to Section 3(e) of Executive Order 14188.
- keep international students enrolled in the event of visa revocation, legal status termination, detention, and/or deportation. Some chapters have already successfully advocated to make this happen.
- allow these international students and scholars to continue their studies and research remotely, if necessary.
- ensure that graduate students and workers whose enrollment is contingent upon funding through graduate teaching appointments or fellowships can continue their coursework, research, and teaching appointments. This may mean that the college or university covers the increased cost of assigning additional teaching appointments to a graduate student not residing in the United States.
- communicate reliable, timely information to international students and scholars, including immediate notification of changes in their legal status.
- provide and pay for legal counsel for those students and scholars whose visas have been revoked.
- work swiftly and affirmatively—through lawsuits, if necessary—to stop the termination of legal status of students and scholars without due process.
Miami University must protect our students and colleagues from federal attempts to silence, harass, and intimidate. We can best do this working together with the courage and conviction of management, faculty, librarians, and students.
Signed,
FAM, AAUP-AFT
Leave a Reply