Hundreds from New York universities rallied in Manhattan Thursday against funding cuts under the Trump administration, chanting "Hands off higher education! Hands off our students!"

by Ada Zhang

NEW YORK, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of faculty, students, researchers, and staff from New York universities rallied in Manhattan on Thursday against policies and funding cuts targeting higher education under U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

The rally had the theme of "Hands off higher education! Hands off our students!"

The funding cuts are an attempt to "undermine the right to learn," James Davis, a faculty member at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), told Xinhua.

Recent policies "undermine and erode the right of faculty to teach in their expertise and to teach the truth as they pursue it, and the right that students have to learn," said Davis, who also serves as president of the labor union representing faculty and staff across the CUNY system, which includes 30,000 public sector academic workers.

CUNY is one of the largest public university systems in the United States. Last week, 17 international students at CUNY had "a change in visa status," said a statement released by the university.

"Many of my colleagues are here on international visas. In the past, they didn't have to worry about their legal status. But now, under these new pressures, they're afraid of losing their visas, their jobs, their ability to stay in this country," said Davis.

"It's been scary," Edison Routh, a student at Hunter College, told Xinhua. "We're interested in defending immigrants, our fellow co-workers, classmates and students," he said, holding a sign that read "Free Mahmoud Khalil Now."

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University, was arrested on March 8 in his campus dormitory and transferred to an immigration detention center in the southern state of Louisiana. He was called a "Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student" by Trump on social media following his arrest.

Columbia University, which became the heart of last year's pro-Palestinian protests, is the first university to face concrete consequences under the Trump administration's recent policy shifts. In March, it lost 400 million U.S. dollars in federal funding.

In response, university officials said they are in ongoing negotiations with federal authorities to restore the funding. Meanwhile, Columbia University announced a series of new measures, including expelling or suspending some students last month for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

Grant Miner, a fifth-year PhD student in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was among those expelled.

"In a sense, we almost knew it was coming," Miner told Xinhua. "They're cutting funds for education. They're putting the education of Americans in danger in order to make sure that nobody criticizes their policies."

A Columbia University faculty researcher, who declined to be identified, said his lab at the Medical Center had already lost federal funding.

"We've all been affected," the researcher, who asked not to be identified, told Xinhua. He said faculty members are increasingly concerned not only about their work, but also about the chilling effect of recent policies and political pressure.

"We're all frustrated and angry and hopeful that the university could stand up for us, for the faculty and for the students. And that all the universities together can stand up to the Trump administration," he said.

The researcher told Xinhua he entered academia to pursue scientific research and mentor young scholars, but instead, the focus is now being diverted to defending the rights of students and colleagues. "We'd all just like to go back to a time when we could do our work and our students felt safe," he said.

Harvard University became the latest target this week in another escalation of the federal government's fight against higher education. On Monday, the Trump administration announced a freeze of 2.2 billion dollars in multi-year grants and a 60-million-dollar contract with Harvard, just hours after the university refused to comply with a list of government demands.

The administration on Thursday threatened to bar Harvard from enrolling international students unless the school turns over detailed records about its student population. ■