With President-elect Trump returning to office, colleges and universities are preparing for new legal and political terrain.
Concerns about international students, GOP attacks on higher education and increasing protests on campus are just some of the worries administrators are concerned about.
“I think we’re obviously preparing,” said Todd Wolfson, national president of the American Association of University Professors. “It’s a new legal terrain, it’s a new policy terrain for higher education and for universities and colleges. And certainly the Trump administration has signaled that it will engage colleges and universities in a different way.”
One of the pillars of Trump’s 2024 campaign was a commitment to the largest mass deportation effort in history, which could affect both students and faculty at universities. He has vowed to target undocumented people and potentially seek the legal status of many people in the country in accordance with the law, including those with fleeting protected status or student visas.
But when they think about protecting their students from deportation, schools remain hushed about it. The Hill reached out to more than 30 colleges and universities to discuss possible plans if Trump targets college students with his immigration efforts, and none have commented.
And it’s not just international students who could be at risk, as Trump has previously threatened to target those participating in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, although he has also expressed his willingness to make a deal that would allow them to remain in the country.
“For our DACA students, many of our institutions have encouraged those with DACA to renew their registration,” said Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education.
Schools are and have been haunted by the memory of Trump’s “Muslim ban” on international travel from his first term urged foreign students to come back to campus ahead of his inauguration and the possible adoption of new restrictions.
The United States welcomed more than a million international students to universities in 2023-2024, a record, with India overtaking China as the No. 1 sending country.
“Unfortunately, the first travel ban caused a lot of chaos because they tried to implement it immediately after it was passed, and so many of our students got caught in the mess,” Spreitzer said.
“I think a lot of our institutions are erring on the side of caution. I would say they want international students back on campus by January 20th because we don’t know what will be in this travel ban […] But what I have told my institutions is that students were never directly affected by the travel bans,” she added.
The Trump world has also made H1-B visas, which US corporations utilize to hire foreign workers for certain positions, a warm topic of discussion. While universities are exempt from the H1-B caps applicable to other industries, this status could now be up for debate.
During his time in office, Trump has not softened his rhetoric toward colleges, including threatening to defund schools with diversity, equity and inclusion measures, saying he will “take away their endowments and they will pay us billions and billions of dollars.” for the terror they unleashed on our once great country.”
Another issue concerns accreditation, the process that approves universities and grants them federal funding — and a new target for Republicans.
Back in September, Trump said schools could lose their accreditation for “anti-Semitic propaganda,” although there has been a major debate at colleges over the past year over how anti-Semitism is defined.
“My fear is that the Trump administration will actually seek accreditation and try to politicize a previously apolitical institution,” Wolfson said. “So I can imagine them coming in and trying to change the accreditation […] and set standards and say you can’t be accredited if you teach critical race theory.”
Colleges must prepare not only for what the Trump administration will do, but also for how their students will respond.
Campus protests were a large problem last year Demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war Last spring, classes were closed and classes were canceled.
Trump has also specifically threatened to challenge the student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters.
While universities have changed some of their rules related to campus protests, such as: Some measures, such as banning camps or halting amplified noise after a certain period of time, mean tensions on campus are high and could get worse under Trump
“I expect there will be increased protests on campus for all sorts of reasons,” Wolfson said.
“I think we would be surprised if we didn’t see juvenile people protesting against various aspects of the new government. And I think that both our campuses and the way our administrations are handling this, and then also the way the federal administration, the new Trump administration, is handling this part are concerning,” he added added.
