The Unfortunate Case of Rumeysa Ozturk
We need to be wary of a slippery slope on free speech.
In recent weeks, college campuses have been shaken by incidents in which foreign students with visas or green cards have been arrested and threatened with deportation. The most recent (that I’m aware of) has been Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts who’s been arrested and threatened with deportation for writing an oped critical of Israel and in line with pro- Palestinian activism. The government views these actions as supportive of Hamas, a terrorist organization. Free speech advocates see concerns about government intrusion in protected speech. There are also questions of legal immigration…to what extent do we expect legal immigrants to “toe the line” and avoid charged political speech?
These are complicated issues. I’ll focus on Ms Ozturk’s case a bit here, as I’m a bit more familiar with it than the other high profile case, that of Mahmoud Khalil, mainly because her offending essay is easy to find and read and parse directly1. Read it and judge it for yourself. The government’s argument appears to be that her essay glorifies and supports the terrorist organization Hamas, though Hamas is never mentioned in the essay. The essay is highly critical of Israel, and uses the “Palestinian genocide” language that is certainly polemic and one-sided. Is it supportive of Hamas? I guess you could make the argument that anything critical of Israel’s role in the Palestinian quagmire is supportive of Hamas, in same theoretical sense any criticism of Ukraine is supportive of Russia2. But I don’t think that’s a reasonable bar, and I think the onus is on the government here to make a solid case, which they haven’t.
Keeping the onus on the government to prove their case and expecting a high bar for the same isn’t just a kindness to immigrants: it’s good for US citizens too. Censorship advocates always search for weak links in free speech; speech that is difficult to defend, or people difficult to defend, to get the ball rolling and open a door for further censorship. We can see this in the social media panic where “save the children” narratives are even built on literal fiction. In the Ozturk case, arguably3 obnoxious speech by an immigrant is punished in the name of protecting us from “antisemitism.”
Do we really have confidence that a presidential administration, Republican or Democrat, is going to stop at just a little censorship? Trump has been more vocal than most about supporting authoritarian policies (and capitalizing on understandable frustrations by many citizens to do so). But Biden had his own “Ministry of Truth” that, once again, was advertised as “protecting” us from “disinformation”. We need to be wary of censorship efforts, and that starts with the least protected people and includes the most obnoxious speech4. And the power we give to one side (our side!) will ultimately be weilded by the other, down the road.
This does, however, raise the question: Do we have no expectations for immigrants at all? Coming to the United States is a privilege, not a right (no, sorry progressives, it is not). I’m not at all an immigration lawyer, but for immigrants seeking to become permanent citizens, they must pass citizenship exams, and declare allegiance to the United States. Should we not expect the same in their public behavior?
Ultimately, it’s impractical to expect nations to naively allow in immigrants who actively hate that nation and its people5. As such, I don’t find it unreasonable to have some basic expectations for immigrants’ public behavior. To be clear, for the US, I don’t expect immigrants to have no complaints about anything. Complaining about government bureaucracy and red tape, including within the immigration system itself, is a time-honored American tradition. Immigrants should feel free to take positions on the many public debates raging in the US, whether abortion, political reform, energy policy, etc., indeed including the Israel/Palestinian crisis. Immigrants should also feel free to criticize particular politicians and argue for party politics as they see fit. And importantly…allegiance to the United States does not necessarily invoke an allegiance to the US’ allies, whether Israel, the UK (which plenty of Irish immigrants loathed), Saudi Arabia, Japan, etc.
On the other hand, should an immigrant express outright hatred for the US and its people, or advocate for known terrorist groups such as Hamas, or promote values antithetical to US values (including explicit antisemitism or hatred toward any group or support for extreme political views ranging from Naziism to Communism to autocratic theocracies), I think a reevaluation of their immigration status is reasonable. Imagine, at the extreme, if an immigrant came to the United States publicly advocating for changing the law to allow for sex between adults and minors, would we really not deport them6? To some extent, there’s a parallel between expecting, say, Burger King not to fire someone who has publicly taken to the airwaves to say Burger King sucks7, and expecting the US to retain immigrants who plainly hate the US. However, what “the rules” are should be made as clear as possible, with limits that are narrow and specific, and the onus to prove violation on the government.
In the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, I don’t believe that threshold is crossed. I don’t share her views on “Palestinian genocide” but that argument remains within the Overton Window. The Trump Administration has overstepped into a weak case and is threatening free speech protections that are critical for a functioning democracy.
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As is often the case with charged political issues, finding a clear, commonly agreed-upon narrative about what exactly Mr. Khalil did has been somewhat more frustrating. It makes it more difficult to parse his case if the narratives range from his being an innocent lamb handing out mere flyers to his participating in illegal, anti-semitic protest camps in support of Hamas. The most common account seems to be that he acted as an interlocutor for some of the more aggressive campus protests though what that means exactly is still open to a lot of interpretation in terms of exactly what he did. Unfortunately, news media on both left and right have so utterly torched their credibility, it can be difficult to know who to believe.
Or any criticism of progressive policies is supportive of Trump, etc., etc. Thought purity is enforced by all sides.
Whether one finds Ms Ozturk’s speech obnoxious or not depends on one’s prior views on this controversial issue, of course. We tend to judge speech as obnoxious or reasonable in no small part based on its allegiance with our own a priori views.
There are some understandable limitations of course: Child pornography, libel/slander, harassment and threats, etc.
I suspect this a problem some European countries have created for themselves.
We’d reasonably expect even a US citizen advocating such repulsive views to experience significant social costs, such as to their job.
Admittedly, I’d be more sympathetic to Burger King if they made the Italian chicken sandwich with marinara sauce a permanent menu item.