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Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department had revoked more than 300 student visas. The move allows the Trump administration to deport noncitizens who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the country.
Rubio defended the decision when asked about concerns over free speech — specifically, whether protesting or writing about foreign policy issues could justify a visa revocation.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of ‘free speech.’
“If you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa,” he said. “We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine our universities. I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.”
Rubio is right.
Whether someone supports Israel, supports the Palestinian cause, or criticizes both, that debate is beside the point.
No one has a right to a U.S. visa — student or otherwise. If a visa-holder engages in speech or activism that violates the terms of the visa — such as promoting violence, disrupting public order, or engaging in unauthorized political activity — the government has the authority to revoke the visa and deport the individual.
A free people's suicide
The Trump administration has made this position clear, particularly in cases involving pro-Palestinian protesters who have expressed support for Hamas, which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization.
But the issue of foreign student activism extends beyond the Israel-Hamas conflict.
An analysis by the Capital Research Center found that many “pro-Palestinian” groups share ties with broader movements that oppose the United States and the West in general. These groups frequently advocate violence to achieve their goals, including the destruction of the U.S., which they label an imperialist “settler-colonial” state.
Revoking the visas of foreign students who disrupt public order or seek to undermine American society is both legal and necessary. But the issue goes beyond campus protests. With hundreds of thousands of student visa-holders from adversarial nations like China, the threat is not just ideological — it’s also a national security concern.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of “free speech.”
The Constitution does not guarantee the right to a U.S. education. Attending an American university is a privilege, not a right.
Ideological takeover
Understanding the difference between rights and privileges is essential — especially considering the influence universities have on shaping American political discourse. While student visas are intended for academic study, today’s universities increasingly promote ideological activism over traditional education. And that shift is happening at the same time as the number of international students in the U.S. has grown to over 1 million annually.
At Columbia University, more than 55% of students are foreign nationals — an 18% increase between 2017 and 2022. NYU’s student body is 42% international, up 24% over the same period. This trend is just as pronounced at the graduate level. In 2023, international students made up 42% of Princeton University’s graduate program.
As foreign student enrollment rises alongside campus political activism, the Trump administration has the authority and obligation to respond decisively to the growing influence of ideological movements within universities.
In a series of aggressive actions, the administration has withheld hundreds of millions in federal funding from institutions like Columbia University for what it calls “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” It has also launched investigations into other universities over allegations of race-based segregation and transgender athletic policies. Through executive order, the administration has taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education — a long-standing goal for many conservatives since the department’s establishment in 1979.
Whose ‘political will’?
Unsurprisingly, the left has responded with swift opposition, deploying both legal challenges and familiar media outrage.
Several academic groups have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to stop the deportation of foreign students. Teachers’ unions have sued to block the administration’s move to revoke federal funding from Columbia University, while others have challenged its attempt to shutter the Education Department.
Mainstream media outlets have framed these actions as an “authoritarian power-grab,” accusing the administration of trying to “impose its political will on American universities, which foster curiosity and independent thought.”
Some critics have gone even further, likening Trump’s efforts to confront anti-American activism on college campuses to the Nazi-era program of Gleichschaltung — a system of totalitarian “social control.”
While American universities may be called many things, bastions of “independent thought” are not among them. Claims that Trump is seeking total “social control” are difficult to take seriously, given how heavily university faculty skew left.
A 2023 Harvard Crimson survey found that just 0.4% of Harvard faculty identified as “very conservative,” while 31.8% described themselves as “very liberal.” A broader study of 51 leading liberal arts colleges revealed a 10.4-1 ratio of Democrat to Republican faculty, underscoring a deep ideological imbalance.
This dominance of progressive ideology on campus doesn’t stay confined to the classroom. It flows into national politics, funding Democratic candidates and fueling an activist pipeline that often promotes anti-American narratives.
According to OpenSecrets, Democrats have received more than 70% of all political donations from the education sector in every election cycle since 2002. In 2018, donors from the education industry gave over $64.5 million to Democrats and just $7.8 million to Republicans.
Teachers' unions show an even sharper tilt. In the 2024 cycle, the National Education Association contributed 98.48% of its donations to Democrats and only 0.79% to Republicans. Employees of the U.S. Department of Education gave zero dollars to Republican candidates.
Rooting out radicals
Given the dominance of left-wing ideology on college campuses and the steady stream of campaign donations from the education sector to Democratic politicians, it’s no surprise that Democrats are fiercely defending what functionally operate as their institutions. Trump’s actions threaten not just campus activism but a political pipeline that helps sustain the left’s long-term dominance.
Far from representing an “authoritarian power-grab,” the Trump administration’s efforts mark one of the first serious attempts by the political right to challenge a system that has traded education for progressive indoctrination.
If the country hopes to reclaim its universities — a goal critical to the republic's long-term health — rooting out radical activism and defunding ideological strongholds must continue and accelerate. Republicans cannot afford to hand over the nation’s future to those who openly disdain it.
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