Portside

The government funds institutions that stretch across American society. The Trump administration is demanding the relinquishment of constitutional rights to keep the money flowing.

More than 440 college presidents and other officials signed a letter Tuesday protesting the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” that higher education is facing under the Trump administration.

He is widely known in the upper Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, where he has been based since moving to the United States more than a decade ago, as a spiritual man who grew up Muslim, a practicing Buddhist, and whose closest friends are Jewish.

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Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and expand your reach by bringing education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement. Or else grovel before a mafia boss.

If due process is of no moment, then the government could snatch any American citizen off the street, falsely accuse them of being a “criminal alien,” ship them to an overseas prison, then disavow any responsibility to bring them back

Rumeysa Ozturk and John Peter Zenger are book ends to the history of the First Amendment — the one that guarantees freedom of speech, association, religion, the right to petition for redress of grievances and freedom of the press.

Radical labor leader Harry Bridges successfully fought the government's attempt to deport him. In the Bridges case, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens enjoyed the same First Amendments rights as everyone else.

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The legal profession cannot afford to remain silent. Lawyers — especially those in positions of influence — have a responsibility to represent those being victimized and to speak up. Not to accommodate.