Trump Targets California International Students and Higher Ed
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Playing May 2nd through June 8th. More info at berkeleyrep.org. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. The Trump administration is targeting universities in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. The administration has gone after different funding sources, launched investigations, and revoked the visas of international students.

Add it all up and it's an unprecedented assault on an educational system that has been the envy of the world for decades. We'll talk about what's behind the attacks, the impact that they're having on universities here in California, and how students and administrators are responding. It's all coming up next, right after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. More than a thousand international college students, scores of them in California, have had their visas terminated without explanation under new Trump administration policies. These young people have come from all over the world to our university system, and for reasons that remain unclear, they've become part of the Trump administration's culture war on colleges and universities across the country.

Today, we're going to talk about the national picture, Harvard and all that. But we're also going to look at California schools, including the Cal State system, which has seen dozens of students have their visas revoked. Joining us this morning, we've got three journalists. Doug Belkins is higher education and national news reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Doug.

Thanks for the invitation. We've got Molly Gibbs, who is Bayer News Group education reporter with the East Bay Times. Thanks for joining us, Molly. Thanks for having me. And we've got Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at The Daily Californian. Welcome. Hi, thank you. So, Doug, let's start with you. Let's just get people caught up on the big headline fight between the Trump administration and Harvard. What's happened so far? Where do you want to start? I mean, you know, this this thing's been going on for a while that the

The beginning of the negotiations started in March. Harvard reached out to the task force after they saw what was happening with Columbia. Supposedly committee to task force to combat antisemitism. Yeah, that's the name of the task force. And they reached out initially to Columbia. They froze $400 million, uh, kind of spooky higher education community. Harvard reached out to the task force to try to come up with some kind of negotiation or deal so that they didn't go through this. Um,

It sort of fell apart. And, and less earlier this week, they filed a court seeking injunctive relief, uh, immediately following that the school, the task force and the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion and went after the school on a number of fronts, including, um,

international enrollment and a few other different things that would put a significant dent into the bottom line of the university. And sort of the precipitating event that caused Harvard to sort of push back hard on the administration was this sort of list of demands that came in, right? There's some journal reporting on what was in those demands. Can you tell us what it is? Yeah. So Harvard had been moving in the direction of trying to push for more intellectual diversity on their campus.

And obviously they've been trying to bring to heel the anti-Semitism that had been there. The part that was a bridge too far for Harvard was asks essentially that the federal government would be auditing them and sort of being a part of their hiring process. And admissions too, right? Yeah. And admissions, yeah. So why is it, do you think, that Harvard was the first university to push back in this way?

Well, the pressure on them to stand up to the administration was tremendous. They have a $53 billion endowment. So if anybody has the capacity and the wherewithal to do it, it would be Harvard. So I think they acted out of self-interest and out of consideration of the pressure from around the country to act. And I think this deal, you know, it's a tough having that they having

All of this money, $9 billion potentially frozen for them is a big problem. I mean, outside of these individual fights with universities in the Ivy League like Harvard or Columbia, the administration has also slow-rolled or otherwise frozen other types of grant funding too, right? Like around NIH and other things. How do you fit what's going on there into these other conflicts? So the first thing the administration did was

There's something called facilities and administrative costs. If you get a grant from the NIH or some other federal group, the university takes a cut of that grant for overhead. They call it facilities and administration. And that pays for electricity and security and administrative costs. They can take, you know, half of a grant. So if you get a million dollar grant, a half a million of that dollars may go to overhead.

And the first thing that the Trump administration said was we're going to cap that at 15%. So, you know, if you're getting a billion dollars a year, that's a loss of, what, $300,000, you know, right there. Something like, sorry, $300 million, which has a significant impact on the school's budget. So, yeah.

What the Trump administration had said was we think this is paying for waste. The taxpayers shouldn't be paying for wasted money. And it's it's going toward agendas that we're not, you know, in line with. They were talking a lot about the DEI issues back then. So how do you fit in these sort of revoking of visas of international students? Is this part of the sort of immigration strategy of the Trump administration or is it really about higher education?

I think so the higher education earns 50 billion dollars a year 48 billion dollars a year from international students it's like the eighth largest export if you think about the money coming into the country as an export it's it's a massive infusion of cash and universities are highly dependent on this I think it's less so right now in California than in other places but

You know, there are some schools that they really can't get along without it. So this is a shot across the bow of the financials for universities. It's not going to bankrupt Harvard, but they do have somewhere around 10,000 kids from overseas. These kids tend to pay full freight. They're not getting breaks. So universities depend on the money. It's a I think it's probably more about the money, but I can't read their minds. Yeah.

Let's come to our local reporters here. Molly Gibbs, let's talk about what you're seeing at the UCs and Cal State schools. What do we know about the students who are being targeted there? Yeah, it's interesting.

It seems to be a little bit kind of all over the place, a little widespread. We're seeing students who may have participated in pro-Palestine protests, political activities, be the ones that seem to be targeted. But we've also seen students who may just have traffic violations also lose their visas. So it really seems to be whoever could potentially fall in the line of attack from the Trump administration is at risk.

There's been a lot of attention to the elite universities, kind of the ones making the headlines. What's happening at sort of like the Cal State system, though? How are those schools dealing with or preparing for what's happening to their international students?

Yeah, I mean, I would actually just say kind of widespread. We've seen a lot of the actions being taken against higher ed institutions really be concentrated on the East Coast. But I would say that UC Berkeley, San Jose State, even Stanford are really at risk of being targeted next, whether that's via international students, whether that's just from their own investigations that are pending. I would say that they're pretty high up on the list. Yeah.

Aria, at Berkeley right now, you guys are almost kind of following it on almost like a student-by-student level. I mean, how many students do we know at UC Berkeley who've had their visas revoked? As of last Thursday, the number stands at 23. And so, you know, what has that done on campus? Like, do all the international students, like, living at the I-House, like, right there, are they worried? I mean, what's it like? Yeah, I mean...

For the folks on F1 visas, I think there is kind of a palpable sense of concern. That becomes especially prevalent for individuals who may have already have spoken out in some political messaging either against Trump or in the pro-Palestine protests last year on campus.

There are those folks who, you know, at Berkeley and at the Daily Cow, there are people who we've cited in our articles or may have written op-eds who have reached out and asked for their name to be taken off some articles because of, you know, for example, the Tufts student who had written an op-ed and had their visa revoked. I mean, the sense of worry is there, although we have thousands of international students on campus and proportionally the fraction is quite small, but the fear is kind of larger than that. Yeah.

How do you deal with that when a student comes and says, you know, you cited me last May and now I'm worried that I'm going to be deported? Yeah, we kind of do it on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not in the room and I'm not on the board who decides this officially, but I was one of the reporters who covered the pro-Palestine encampment and talked to folks who may have been international students who now feel as though their advocacy at the time may lead to some issues with their immigration status.

So we ask them to come to us and say, OK, do you have credible fears that, you know, either your family or yourself may face retaliation because of what you said or how you're cited? And we generally have been accepting these because, you know, we want our students to be protected as well. Are you seeing, you know, acceleration, deceleration in the number of students who are having their visas revoked? Like what's the kind of curve of that look like? Yeah. Yeah.

Around two weeks ago is when we first saw the first revocation at Berkeley and across the UC system. And there was a pretty fast increase. One day we saw 13 person jump and then every day was kind of going ones and twos. But over the past week, it's kind of slowed down. We've been standing at 23 for a while right now. And we've seen that trend across the UC as well, where we reached up to 90. But then, you know, even the Office of the President hasn't really given us updated numbers since then.

And that trend has kind of followed across the U.S. We've been in some contact with students who have been tracking visa revocations, international students themselves who have been tracking visa revocations internally through group chats online, Discord servers. And I talked to the organizer yesterday, and she said that over the past three days, they haven't heard of any more visa revocations. What do you make of that?

I think that it could, again, this is conjecture, honestly, but this could be for a few reasons. One of them, which ICE uses the investigative case management system to identify individuals. That's a system created by Palantir. You can look at the government contracts. And based on what we've seen, they tag individuals based on a variety of factors. The individuals who I talk to believe that there is a strong correlation between those individuals who have been fingerprinted in law enforcement interactions

as reasons for their visa or SEVIS termination. To that effect, I think that perhaps the ways in which ICE is identifying people have run their course. Like the first tranches been done, tier one. Either that or because of the recent TROs that have been successful across the United States, the Trump administration could be waiting to see how that plays out in court before continuing with visa revocations.

We're talking about Trump's attacks on higher education, what it means for California universities, colleges, international students in particular. Joined by Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at The Daily Californian, Molly Gibbs, Bayer News Group education reporter with the East Bay Times, and Doug Belkins, higher education and national news reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

Love to hear from you. Are you a student or faculty member on campus right now? Are you feeling the impact of these policy changes on higher ed? You can give us a call. 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. What do you think about the way universities have been responding to this?

to the Trump administration. You can call us about that or send us an email, forum at kqed.org or find us on all the social media things. We're at KQED Forum there as well. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break. The missing child is Lucia Blix, nine years old. Please let her come back home safely. Thursdays, the kidnappers plundered meticulously. If money is what it takes to get her back, we're going to pay it.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about what's happening in California's colleges and universities in response to Trump administration's attacks on them.

Joined by Molly Gibbs, Bay Area News Group education reporter with East Bay Times. Doug Belkins, reports on higher education and national news with The Wall Street Journal. And Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at The Daily Californian. We're going to get to your calls now.

and your questions about what's happening at the universities, you can call 866-733-6786. You can email forum at kqed.org. One point of clarification, Ari, what do we mean when we say a student has had their visa revoked? Yeah. I mean, obviously, a visa is what controls valid entry into the U.S. That could be an F-1, M-1, H-1B, all these different statuses. However, what actually...

maintains an individual's legal status in the United States is what's called their SEVIS record, which is the Student Exchange Information System, which campuses and universities have access to to see if a student actually has legal permanent residence.

And that is actually what is being terminated in a lot of cases. And it may not just be the visa. It could be both, but oftentimes it's just one or the other. But when an individual at a university, say UC Berkeley, is informed that their SEVIS record is terminated, that is what the university is telling them. And that is what has been kind of catching headlines. So when I say 23 visas have been revoked at UC Berkeley, oftentimes it's the SEVIS record. It could also be the visa.

But generally, the media has been using SEVIS and Visa interchangeably because oftentimes it is both. But students and universities really only have access to SEVIS records. Yeah. You know, let's bring in Stephanie at Santa Cruz with another component of this. Welcome, Stephanie.

Hi. I just wanted to bring into the conversation as well. I work at a community college and our students are also having their F-1 visas revoked. We had about six students recently with their F-1s revoked. And I had a student yesterday who emailed me frantically because she has a family member in Japan who is experiencing liver failure and she needed to go home to see that family member, but her counselor was telling her that she needed to have approval from me to be able to enter back into the country. So

So I just wanted to include that into the conversation as well. I know the UCs and the states are being impacted, but our community college students in California are also having a lot on their plate right now, too. Stephanie, talk to me about sort of international students at community college. It might not be something that people sort of immediately think of as being like deeply connected.

So we have a very high international student rate at our community college. I would say probably more than half of my students in my class, it feels like, are international students. And so I just empathize with these students so much because imagine focusing on school and all the pressures that come with college. And then on top of that, being worried about your status here in the United States.

And so I can't imagine, you know, going through the everyday life of a college student, but on top of that, being constantly concerned about being deported or having your F-1 visa revoked as well. But community colleges serve a large population of international students. And so those students are really at risk right now as well.

You know, Doug Belkins, I was kind of curious how you see the sort of different parts of the higher education system kind of fitting together into this picture. You know, we've talked community college, we've talked Harvard, we've talked UC Berkeley, we've talked Cal State system. Like, how do you put all this together in the Trump administration kind of strategy there?

He ran on a campaign. Part of his platform was to rein in elite universities. He described them as being, you know, extreme Marxist professors. And he said that he was going to attack that. J.D. Vance was very explicit. You know, the problem the American faces right now is university professors. So I think he's carrying out a campaign promise. And these are all different facets and levers he can pull to do that. Yeah.

Let's bring in a caller in Palo Alto. Welcome.

Hi, I'm a grad student at Stanford, and I just wanted to share some frustration about my university's response to the Trump administration in terms of something that a journalist at the New York Times had called obedience in advance. There hasn't been, you know, any legal pressure, at least publicly, towards the university about taking down DEI posts on our campus or, like...

Yeah, starting to withhold student visas, but we already see a lack of action. And then with the Harvard motions the last few weeks, I think there's a lot of anticipation or optimism, I guess, that the university administration would follow suit, especially after the precedent had been set. And then there's a letter that comes out from several university administrators saying,

I guess, co-signing that they wouldn't comply. And it was really disappointing to see no representation from our university. There's other things that have been frustrating, but yeah, I wanted to hear your thoughts about that. Yeah, thanks for calling. You know, Molly, maybe you could talk a little bit about the different ways that local universities have responded, like who has been the most...

Well, just, yeah, I'll just leave it at that, how different universities have responded. Yeah, I think it's interesting to mention that, you know, there's been no real legal pressure against Stanford, for example, but they're already seeing some maybe preemptive compliance out of fears kind of being the next one to be targeted. So I would say it's...

It's interesting. Stanford did release a statement of support following the Harvard decision to announce that they wouldn't be complying with the Trump administration. Grad students and faculty members and undergrad students did kind of respond and call for a stronger statement of support. But that's not something that we've seen from the UC system or the Cal State system at all. They've kind of been quietly responding.

I would say hovering on the fence in either direction, which makes a lot of sense because if you're concerned that you're a target of any one of these investigations or you could risk your federal funding, you wouldn't necessarily want to do something to bring the Trump administration's attention to you. You know, Doug, that does seem to be the way that a lot of universities have viewed this, that they just don't want to get separated from the herd. How has that worked so far?

Well, we're starting to see there was a letter that came out yesterday that's been signed by a couple hundred presidents who are backing Harvard. You know, Harvard's sort of the lead on this and people are lining up behind them. I think they're pushing that. There was a lot of silence before that. That's breaking now. You know, Stanford did release something a few days before that, you know, saying they supported Harvard. So, yeah.

I think that there's sort of a line being formed up behind Harvard right now. Have you seen anything like this, either the attacks or the response from universities sort of in your history of reporting on all these things? Oh, this is very unusual what's happening now. There actually was a precedent. I think when...

i'm not i don't have i don't have this completely nailed but but when oh when obama maybe in 2011 title yeah where they so they push for universities to take more seriously title ix which which is sort of gender issues on campus and you know there was a lot of complaints at that time that women were being harassed actually harassed and such on campuses and they were not and these were being swept under the rug and so

Obama said, you know, you guys need to deal with this more forthrightly or else. And so there was a carrot there. Generally speaking, universities were, you know, this aligned with what they thought they should do. So there was there was not this kind of pushback. Also, was there sort of a difference in degree of pressure there that kind of becomes a difference in kind? Or do you think it was similar level of pressure, but just with a different kind of political dimension?

Well, I mean, there wasn't much space, I think, back then between what universities wanted to do and now. Right. So Harvard, for instance, is moving in this direction of trying to unwind some of the issues that the Trump administration is concerned about. But he's going, you know, the task force has gone farther than they're comfortable with. And I don't think that was the case in 2011.

We are talking about the Trump administration's approach to higher education, what it means for California universities and colleges. Joined by Doug Belkin's higher education and national news reporter at The Wall Street Journal. We also have Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at The Daily California and obviously on the Berkeley campus. We have Molly Gibbs, Bay Area News Group education reporter with The East Bay Times.

Are you a student or a faculty member on campus right now? Are you feeling the impacts of the Trump administration on higher ed? You can give us a call. Number is 866-733-6786. What do you think of the way universities have been responding to the Trump administration? Again, that's 866-733-6786.

You can email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, et cetera. We're kqedforum. Or you can go to the Discord community, of course, as well.

Some thoughts coming in via the comments here. Chris writes, you know, all universities, colleges, and their alumni need to join forces, act as a block. Again, all alumni, call your alma mater, advocate pushing back. It's one of the best ways to protect our democracy. Safety in numbers. Ari, on campus, like, are you seeing that or getting any reporting about, you know, alumni putting pressure, professors putting pressure on the administration, students putting pressure? How's that look? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, all of those groups, to be honest. I mean, I will say something first is that UC Berkeley as part of the larger UC system, even the administration themselves may not be able to do exactly what they want to do because they have to defer to UCOP, the office of the president, President Drake. But I mean, there has been faculty protests. There have been student protests, GSI protests, the unions, all of them have come out, you know, standing on Sprout almost every week.

kind of calling for further action, further statements to protect students, to protect funding, to protect science. All of these things that Trump has been attacking in higher ed over the course of his administration has been talked about on campus. What does the administration at Berkeley say about what they can do or can't do to protect these students? They're basically just saying we can't do anything?

They're not saying that. I mean, publicly, of course, you know, they're drawing a line at some point. You know, they're saying, of course, for example, students who are having their visas revoked, they're offering support and guidance and, you know, messages. But they can't offer legal support, direct support to those who want to maybe fight their cases. They'll defer them to an immigration attorney. But, you know, oftentimes these immigration attorneys are going to cost these students money.

Yeah.

Molly, what are you hearing about universities' attempts to sort of protect their students? Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of the UCs and the CSUs are public campuses, right? So technically they can't prevent ICE from coming onto campus because it is a publicly accessible campus. That doesn't mean that they necessarily have to work with them or comply with them kind of going over that line, which is something that they've told students that they won't do.

So there are some areas like dorms, sometimes faculty offices, classrooms that are private spaces within a certain scope or time frame. And so that's one area that they've said that students could be safe from any immigration officers on campus. But, yeah, it's tough because ultimately there's only so much they can do against the federal administration. Yeah.

And I think one of the calls we've seen from students and faculty members is additional support of students and protections and not going out of their way to kind of assist the Trump administration in this attempt.

You know, I was curious, you know, and, you know, one of our callers wanted to know this as well. I mean, when a student does have their, the various ways that you described that we call having their visa revoked, what happens? Do they just have to leave right then? Like, do they go, like, what happens? I mean, I think it's kind of unclear at this point. I'll give you an example of one student that we talked to. The student had their visa terminated, service record terminated, and

They had had no previous criminal convictions. They hadn't spoken out online. They're an international student from China. And what they did was apparently at some point they had an altercation with their partner outside of an event, and they were taken in by police and detained and fingerprinted but then released. And they had both of these things, their SEVIS and visa terminated.

So they went to the BIO, the Berkeley International Office, and they told them this. The BIO referred them to two lawyers, both of which they said were slow to respond. And they were quoted either $1,500 to go fight and file a TRO, which is money that they might not have had. It was a temporary restraining order. Yeah, a temporary injunction. Or they just leave the country immediately.

So that's kind of the situation that a lot of these individuals are in. However, the university did allow them and has allowed them to complete their degree remotely, which they have expressed some gratitude for.

You know, it's kind of wild to consider, you know, a lot of the science labs and other places. Is there a sense among professors in particular that, you know, their streams of grad students who've come from all over the world are just going to dry up because who wants to be subject to this?

I think there is that fear. However, I will say that, I mean, the fear may be larger than the actual impact. And that's something that I've also heard as well, where if you see Berkeley of 44,000 students on campus and thousands of grad students and international grad students, you know, of the people that have been revoked, it hasn't been a very large number that has directly impacted these labs. However, the fear has is really something that's been felt. Doug, what are you seeing on that score across the country?

Repeat it if you would, Alex. Oh, yeah, sure. Just, you know, whether professors who've had like a stream of graduate students from all over the world, you know, I mean, the classic idea of the best and brightest coming to these places, you know, to do biomedical research, say, is there a fear that it's going to hurt the recruiting of these major institutions? Yeah, it has. I mean, some schools have accepted kids for graduate programs and then essentially revoked their admissions because they're they're worried about graduation.

funding for them. So this is having a material effect on the campuses. And it's among the levers that the government have pulled to apply pressure to get the universities to essentially move in the direction they're urging them to.

One of our listeners, Chris, over on the Discord writes, you know, I'm a professor at UC Berkeley, and I'd like you to know that yesterday our faculty senate passed a resolution demanding that the university protect our academic and political freedom and ensure access to legal support for all international students affected by the visa cancellations. The resolution passed by 95 to 5 percent. That's about 420 to 20 in a meeting with overwhelming support. Our

Ari, does that have a – are these types of resolutions like binding in some way or is it – as you were saying, you know, there's also the UC level, you know, beyond UC Berkeley? I mean it's difficult to say. It all depends. I mean there's levels of bureaucracy at the UC which, you know –

We don't really know how these things are going to have an effect. Of course, this is a powerful statement from the faculty that they're out in support of these students and in support of free speech. However, we'll see if Rich Lyons, the chancellor of Berkeley, and President Drake at UCOP actually take some actions to, I guess, act on what the faculty are calling for. Yeah.

Um, I just want to, do you want to know? Yeah. Can I go back to your, um, your impact of the, on the science aspect? I think it's interesting. Um, just in conversations I've had with faculty members, um,

And researchers at universities, they've kind of expressed this concern for the next generation of scientists, whether that's undergrad students who might have been considering going to grad school and now are no longer because of limited opportunities available or international students who may not feel welcome on campus anymore because of the transportation.

the Trump administration's kind of immigration shift. And so I think it's also interesting international students pay typically full tuition. So if we're talking about the financial impact at these universities who were already maybe struggling after COVID due to declining enrollment, just general population shifts, and now are potentially facing millions or billions in federal funding cuts,

now also might be losing that income stream from international students. I mean, we're talking about a large financial hit to these universities. We're talking about higher education in California in this moment with the Trump administration. Joined by Molly Gibbs, Bay Area News Group education reporter with the East Bay Times. Doug Belkins, higher education and national news reporter at the Wall Street Journal. And Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at the Daily Californian on the Cal Campus.

Want to hear from you. Are you a student, faculty member on a college campus right now? Are you feeling the impacts of the Trump administration's attacks on higher education? What do you think about the way that universities have been responding to the administration? You can give us a call now, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email forum at kqed.org or find us online.

on social media. We're KQED Forum there as well. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break. I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn Job Collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like FlexPTO or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you.

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the Trump administration's attacks on higher education. They mean for California students, for colleges, administrators, professors. Joined by Arya Mukherjee, who's deputy news editor at The Daily Californian, Doug Belkin's higher education and national news reporter with The Wall Street Journal, and Molly Gibbs, Bay Area News Group education reporter with the East Bay Times.

Brenna, an associate professor at UC Davis, writes in to say, one new development is that the NIH posted an announcement this week stating any new grant or even grant renewal will need to certify that there are no, quote, DEI programs at the institution receiving the grant.

My lab has three NIH grants up for renewal in June. If we don't receive funding or it is delayed, then my graduate students can no longer be paid over the summer, which is especially difficult for international students. Leadership from the state of California is really missing here. Why haven't they put together an emergency bill to provide funding for students while this legal tussle with the NIH slash administration is worked out? Doug, let's start with you on this. This has been kind of one of the sticks that has been used by the Trump administration.

In terms of pulling the NIH funding? Yeah. Or at least pushing them through a no diversity, equity, and inclusion filter. Yeah. No, this is... They are working very hard to squeeze the DEI out of universities, and this is a considerable lever they're pulling to do just that. Yeah. And...

And what about, Molly, this idea that the state of California should be able to step into the breach here and help out? Yeah, it's been something that's kind of been working its way through the California legislature, especially as we're kind of seeing the rapid decrease of the federal Department of Education and that being disbanded. I think the challenge here is that

just how much money is actually able to kind of go around. CSU and UC have called recently for additional state funding. That's one of their demands that we've seen at protests and in statements recently.

Yeah.

Ari? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing this as well even this year where the UC had a pretty large reduction in state funding. That also applied to the CSU as well, I think about 8%. And that has already created times of austerity for the UC and at UC Berkeley. President Drake at the last regents meeting called for a system-wide hiring freeze, which was kind of unprecedented at the time, as well as some restrictions to travel and maintenance, which are things that UC Berkeley desperately needs.

Um, and to that effect, I mean, when we have these Trump attacks, plus the state funding cuts compounding, it's a really difficult situation for all these universities and especially universities who don't really have control over, um, all of their policies if they're under a UC system. So it just creates a system where, you know, faculty and students can yell to their administration all they want, but even those that administration may not be able to do anything about it. Hmm. Um,

Pat writes in to say your guests and Doug, I think this one's coming for you. Compared Obama's Title IX enforcement to Trump's actions, which Trump maintains is mostly focused on stopping anti-Semitism on some campuses. First, Obama only stated that schools had to meet the goals of Title IX, which is required by law.

Anti-Semitism, while horrific and dangerous, is not against the law. Second, Obama threatened sanctions if schools did not obey the law but did not proactively start attacking schools by stripping them of millions and even billions of dollars worth of public funds intended to support the common good, despite some ways that should be thoughtfully addressed and certainly did not dictate control of curricula, etc. Do you want to just take that?

Well, I mean, they're both the theme that runs through them both is their civil rights violations. Right. There was a claim that civil rights of females mostly on campus were being violated because the schools weren't dealing with it. And that's the same issue here that Jews have been subject to anti-Semitism. And so they're not able to get to class. And, you know, time, place and manner restrictions of protests have been such that Jews have felt marginalized. Right.

So that's the through line. The way that the administrations have dealt with it are not the same, except that they've both said that they would, you know, they were going to make they were going to make something happen. And so they sort of levied a threat. Trump has followed through. That's the big difference. And maybe even preemptively strip funding away in some cases. Let's bring in Jamie in the East Bay. Welcome, Jamie.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. I just wanted to comment and share a little bit about my experience. I used to be an international student some time back, and I can certainly empathize with what international students are going through today.

When I was a student, I was a student through 9-11, and that in and of itself was significantly dramatic as an international student because of the nature of the attacks and who was involved in them, international students. And, you know, there's...

apples and origins in a certain way what happened then to what's happening now however uh... it's amazing to me what's happening right now because of how it's affecting international students whether it's only a thousand or lost their their that's uh... with a right to be in the country uh...

it's definitely going to affect the mental health and the emotional health of any international student that is in this country. I have since become a naturalized citizen, and I am experiencing significant trauma triggered from what's happening. And it's all due to Steve Miller and the Trump administration and their unspeakable and heinous actions

this country is a melting pot and i think we are lucky to experience the significant diversity that international students bring not only that but also how it's a huge brain drain and it's making this country better to have people from all over the world uh... that share their life experiences share about their culture making base american culture a much richer one

Yeah, Jamie, that's a great point. Thank you so much also for sharing your experience. You know, Ari, I wanted to come to you on this, just on, you know, as you're talking with students and, you know, we oftentimes focus on students' mental health in general, right, which has been very difficult over the last, you know, five years. How are these students dealing with it? I mean, have you heard those kinds of concerns?

Yeah, it's not great for the students who have already had their visa or service terminated. And I mean, that kind of comes with no surprise. But even for those that haven't, I mean, there are some students that I know who, say, may have had an interaction with law enforcement where they're fingerprinted. And because of the simple...

randomness of these visa and service terminations. There's kind of this fear every day where they're waking up and say expecting to see an email in their inbox from the international office saying that they can no longer remain in this country or study at UC Berkeley. And I mean that's an anxiety and that's a fear that's really penetrated through the international community. Yeah.

One for you, Molly. Chuck writes in to say, UCSF is one of the greatest recipients of National Institutes of Health research grants. I think it might even be number one at times, right?

The list of research grants being cut is growing daily. That impacts faculty and staff now, not in the future. Additionally, our projects focus on the health of groups suffering the burden of disparity are being told to change their names and focus. A project focused on black health, for example, will no longer have that focus or that name. Yeah. Is this a question? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Just is that what you're kind of seeing? You know, talk to me a little bit about UCSF in general, maybe as a project.

as such a huge recipient, which obviously makes them a target. Yeah, I think you're right. UCSF is the biggest recipient of NIH funding. I think this is interesting. You know, I've talked with students who have spent six months working on grant proposals only to have to completely scrap it because they mentioned the word diversity or equity or even in ways that aren't necessarily related to DEI, just

the word itself kind of is an immediate trigger for the Trump administration to slash that funding. So, um,

And I've talked to faculty members as well who are spearheading these groups to kind of increase equity within science. And, you know, we're talking about a loss of opportunity for students who may not be able to access higher education or research or these science positions without these programs in place. And I think to some extent we're talking about years of an impact and we are seeing some of it now, but I think it's really just going to be more to come. Yeah.

You know, let's bring in Meg in Menlo Park. Welcome, Meg.

Hi, yeah, I have two degrees from UCs, and I also did a PhD in a foreign country, and my son's at a UC, so I feel passionately about all this. I know from, especially with graduate students, but even undergrads, that many universities have partner universities. For instance, Princeton has a campus in China, UCs have multiple campuses, and most professors share their research goals with their colleagues. Can we not...

set up partnerships at other universities where students maybe still get a UC degree, maybe even get a joint degree with, you know, Zurich or Oxford or Cambridge, and some of their fees go to those universities to help support the research there. Professors get joint publications, which is great. I think that the UCs need to be really focused

in how they handle this to end run this horrible administration. Meg, thanks for that call. Appreciate that kind of forward thinking. And Doug, I wanted to ask you about looking a little bit ahead at the next few moves here. Talk to us about what you're looking for. Obviously, there's the lawsuit that Harvard has filed. There's all...

a variety of things going on with international students. What do you think are the next most important moves that are going to play out? I think Harvard is sort of the point of the spear right now. What happens with this suit, if they be able to negotiate something, if it goes to court and there's some kind of injunctive relief, that's the focus of our reporting. There's a lot of

You know, that's going to be determinative of, I think, to some extent, what the task force does next. Also at Columbia, you know, they've pushed for a consent decree there that Columbia is not eager to be controlled by a court-ordered judge. If that happens, then that also sends a signal. So these are sort of the two arenas where this is playing out in its most heated. Yeah, yeah.

Molly, how about the Cal State schools? Are we seeing anything there? Are you looking for anything in the near future with them? Yeah.

I would say the ones that are kind of on our list are UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, Stanford as well. But the main two are those, UC Berkeley, San Jose State, just in terms of kind of being the target of several investigations. I would say UC Berkeley is our number one just because they're facing a DOJ visit. They're facing the anti-Semitism, civil rights. And the name. Yeah. And the racial preferences. But San Jose State too has been the

at the forefront of the Trump administration in terms of their transgender policies, and they are also facing a civil rights investigation for that.

Very specifically for you, I had a question about the sort of UC level like up there. Is there any sense that the UC level is going to do something or do you think it's mostly going to be like at the Berkeley level? I mean, what we've seen in the past few months with UCOP is it's kind of very difficult to tell what they're going to do next. For about 10 years, the UC set up and was kind of the proponent of these diversity statements and faculty hiring statements.

And then we saw in one night, in the night, during the regents' meeting, they put out kind of an explicit ban on diversity statements and hiring, which was kind of a complete 180 on their previous statements. And it wasn't expected. The universities didn't know about it. The same thing with the hiring freeze. The universities didn't know about it, to my knowledge. And it's really unclear who makes the decisions and what are the forces that play up at UCOP. Yeah, interesting.

You know, one listener writes in to say, as a California taxpayer, the fewer international students at California universities, the better for upcoming California high school graduates. I pay taxes for the past 50 years for the benefit of our students, not international students. How do you respond to that? Are you? Can you say that one again? Oh, yeah. I mean, how would you respond to the idea that, you know, UCs are for Californians and not for international students? Yeah.

Personally, as a student, I would kind of disagree with that. I think especially UC Berkeley and these large research universities have a history of, you know,

pushing out some of the best research in the world. And as such, we like the, you know, the best and brightest minds in the world, especially in the graduate student programs. Personally, I disagree with that. I mean, Doug, there's also, you know, the international influx has largely been like a sort of budgetary consideration, right? I mean, in addition to, you know, diversifying campus with a variety of perspectives and those kinds of other things, it really has been, right, the schools need people to pay full freight. Right. So the schools would argue that

Bringing in students from overseas who are paying full freight, and sometimes they have, you know, Purdue used to have an extra tax for students from overseas. So they would argue that they're paying four more seats for domestic students. It's hard to know if that argument holds water or not. The numbers have grown and grown over years. Some of the graduate programs in this country, like electrical engineering, are about three quarters international and probably wouldn't exist without those students.

You know, and then, of course, the pushback is they're taking American seats. And this is an America first administration. So you can see you can see the friction. Yeah. You know, we're kind of returning to the forward look. If this were to escalate, I mean, you could you could see, you know, Harvard cutting some deal and then things deescalate in some way. But like if if it went the other way, what would happen?

You mean if the task force got what they wanted? I guess I just mean, you know, how does the fight get bigger, not smaller? I think right now the sort of knife's edge of this thing is whether or not the federal government

Listen, the federal government provides the gold to these universities, and the person who provides the gold usually gets to write the rules, right? And so this leverage hasn't been applied before, but it's been hanging in the air for a long time. The question is, I think, how much of that leverage are they going to apply? Are they going to demand that they have more oversight than they have in the past going forward? And how much of that will the universities tolerate? What are their options? You know, a school like Harvard is a big endowment. This is not an option to sell funds for other places.

I don't see how the universities are able to get along without their entire structure is built in connection with federal research money. So if the Trump administration wants to take this to the mat and the courts don't agree with the schools, then they don't have a whole lot of leverage, as far as I can tell. Yeah.

We have been talking about the Trump administration's attacks on higher education. A couple last comments here. Ray over on the Discord writes, I wonder about the impact on domestic enrollments or undoubtedly incoming students for this fall that are citizens and will choose not to attend schools that they don't believe stand up for student rights.

Another listener writes in to say, you know, Rick writes, I feel that Trump's attacks on higher education in California mean that we lose many of the brightest minds in science, particularly medical science, including the biomedical sciences, neuroscience, vision science. David writes, please address the broader attack on science and expertise. The similarities between China's cultural revolution, cult of personality and anti-intellectualism in the Trump regime is striking, but

We'll leave it there. We have been talking about Trump administration's attacks on higher education, what it means for California universities and our colleges and even our community colleges. Been joined by Molly Gibbs, Bay Area News Group education reporter with the East Bay Times. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Molly. Yeah, thanks for having me.

We've also been joined by Arya Mukherjee, who is deputy news editor at the Daily Californian, of course, the newspaper at UC Berkeley. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you for having me. And we've been joined by Doug Belkins, who is higher education and national news reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us, Doug. Thanks for having me on. Yeah.

As always, you can follow all of their reporting at the Journal, at the East Bay Times, and at the Daily Californian. Thank you so much, everyone, for your calls and your comments and your contributions to the show. Really appreciate that. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim. Had to stretch it out there for a while. ♪

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