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ICE Jailed a Student for an Op-Ed, Now She’s Left America · Question Everything

0:00
Speaker 1: So where is Dr. Ozturk now?
0:02
Speaker 2: She's in Turkey with her parents.
0:04
Speaker 1: And how's she doing?
0:06
Speaker 2: I believe she's doing good. She's, you know, acclimating to
0:09
Speaker 2: being back home.
0:11
Speaker 1: Ramesa Ozturk, the Tufts University PhD student who was arrested
0:14
Speaker 1: by ICE last spring because she'd co-authored an op-ed in
0:17
Speaker 1: the student newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights. We learned last
0:21
Speaker 1: week that she decided to leave the U.S. and has
0:24
Speaker 1: moved back to Turkey. She completed her degree in child
0:27
Speaker 1: study and human development, so she is now Dr.
0:29
Speaker 3: Ozturk.
0:30
Speaker 1: Shortly after Dr. Ozturk was apprehended last March by masked
0:33
Speaker 1: ICE agents in plain clothes while she was walking down
0:35
Speaker 1: a street near Tufts, our team here at Question Everything
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Speaker 1: worked with the undergrads at the student newspaper that had
0:42
Speaker 1: published Ozturk's op-ed, The Tufts Daily, to hold a live
0:45
Speaker 1: summit on campus. It was exactly a year ago this week, actually.
0:50
Speaker 1: Ozturk was being held in a Louisiana detention center with
0:53
Speaker 1: no charge at that time, and her case was drawing
0:56
Speaker 1: national condemnation. Remember, this was early on in the second
0:59
Speaker 1: Trump administration. when it was still new to see masked
1:02
Speaker 1: ICE agents tackling and snatching people off the streets in
1:05
Speaker 1: broad daylight. Ozturk's lawyers were fighting desperately to get her
1:10
Speaker 1: out of detention. Finally, on May 9th of last year,
1:13
Speaker 1: she was released after being held for 45 days. Since then,
1:17
Speaker 1: she's been finishing her doctorate while batting back efforts from
1:20
Speaker 1: the U.S. government to deport her. The government went so
1:23
Speaker 1: far as to recently fire an immigration judge that had
1:26
Speaker 1: ruled in Ozturk's favor. And one of her attorneys, Naz
1:29
Speaker 1: Ahmed from CUNY's CLEAR Project, told me once Dr. Oster
1:32
Speaker 1: got her degree in February, she decided she was done
1:35
Speaker 1: with America.
1:36
Speaker 2: She thought about where she wanted to pursue her studies,
1:39
Speaker 2: where she wanted to pursue her writing, and she came
1:42
Speaker 2: to the decision that she didn't want to stay here
1:44
Speaker 2: to do that.
1:46
Speaker 1: Oster ended up coming to a settlement with the Trump administration,
1:48
Speaker 1: where the government is agreeing to tie up her legal
1:50
Speaker 1: loose ends. She is dropping her lawsuits against them, including
1:54
Speaker 1: one for violating her First Amendment rights. and she's left
1:57
Speaker 1: the country. Dr. Osterk isn't doing interviews at the moment,
2:01
Speaker 1: but in a statement, she said that she's returning home
2:03
Speaker 1: on her own timeline. She didn't need to settle with
2:06
Speaker 1: the administration to do that, to be able to go home.
2:09
Speaker 1: But in her statement, she said this will prevent her
2:11
Speaker 1: from losing more time to the, quote, state-imposed violence and
2:14
Speaker 1: hostility she said she experienced in the U.S.
2:18
Speaker 2: Just being able to leave in a safe way was
2:21
Speaker 2: really important to us. We're doing this in a step-by-step way,
2:26
Speaker 2: and the government knows it's happening, and they're not taking
2:29
Speaker 2: steps at the airport, for example, to prevent her from
2:32
Speaker 2: leaving or.
2:32
Speaker 4: Something like that.
2:33
Speaker 1: So even though the government is ostensibly saying, we want
2:35
Speaker 1: you out of the country, she could have gone to
2:38
Speaker 1: leave the country of her own volition, and they might
2:41
Speaker 1: have stopped her at the airport. That's conceivable.
2:43
Speaker 2: Or just, yeah, harassed her at the airport or something
2:45
Speaker 2: like that, or treated her in a way that we
2:48
Speaker 2: didn't want her to be treated. She wanted to leave
2:50
Speaker 2: and she wanted to do it in a way that
2:52
Speaker 2: was as protective as possible. You can imagine that anybody
2:57
Speaker 2: in her situation or a similar situation could be concerned
3:00
Speaker 2: about if they've already been like kidnapped off the streets
3:04
Speaker 2: of wherever they live and put in detention. And then
3:07
Speaker 2: they're going to leave the country and they're doing it
3:10
Speaker 2: at a time when theoretically like ISIS stationed at the airport's.
3:14
Speaker 2: They might have concerns about what's going to happen to
3:16
Speaker 2: them there. I'm not saying that's necessarily how Ramesa felt,
3:19
Speaker 2: but you can imagine that somebody similarly situated could have
3:23
Speaker 2: concerns about that.
3:25
Speaker 1: What does it say about the current administration that they
3:29
Speaker 1: just couldn't stomach the fact that she co-authored an op-ed
3:34
Speaker 1: that was critical of Israel, pro-Palestine? It just seems really
3:39
Speaker 1: pathetic that they have to go through all this trouble.
3:41
Speaker 1: to go after a grad student for that.
3:44
Speaker 2: It is really, honestly, quite pathetic.
3:49
Speaker 1: Because Rameza Ozturk's ordeal appears to have come to an end,
3:52
Speaker 1: and because, coincidentally, the episode we released a year ago
3:55
Speaker 1: while she was behind bars just won a Webby Award
3:58
Speaker 1: for Best News in Politics podcast episode, we've decided to
4:01
Speaker 1: share it with you again. Though, frankly, more than either
4:04
Speaker 1: of those reasons, the real value to listening to this conversation,
4:08
Speaker 1: I find, is to think about all that's happened in
4:10
Speaker 1: the years since. All the ways that the U.S. government
4:13
Speaker 1: has been trying to retaliate against people who are saying
4:16
Speaker 1: and reporting things that officials don't like. First Amendment be damned.
4:20
Speaker 1: And how the fear of the government arresting you, threatening
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Speaker 1: you with deportation, is enough to make people censor themselves.
4:26
Speaker 1: That is the very disturbing legacy of Rumesa Ozturk's story.
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Speaker 1: In fact, there's now an active lawsuit from the student
4:33
Speaker 1: newspaper at Stanford against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in
4:36
Speaker 1: large part because of the chilling effect of Ozturk's arrest.
4:40
Speaker 1: The Tufts Daily filed a supporting brief in the case,
4:42
Speaker 1: along with 50 other student newsrooms. But as you'll hear
4:44
Speaker 1: in this discussion, especially in the second half, where the
4:47
Speaker 1: student editors from the Tufts Daily got to ask advice
4:50
Speaker 1: from legendary Washington Post editor Marty Barron, these knock-on effects
4:55
Speaker 1: were just becoming clear. So here it is, our live
4:58
Speaker 1: event at Tufts University about Ramesa Ozturk from a year
5:02
Speaker 1: ago this week.
5:03
Speaker 5: I'm going to tell you about a friend of mine
5:05
Speaker 5: who turned.
5:06
Speaker 6: 40 years old.
5:08
Speaker 1: Welcome, everybody. A little more than a month ago, on
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Speaker 1: March 25th, about a 10-minute walk from this auditorium, we're
5:15
Speaker 1: here on Tufts campus, Tufts PhD student Rumesa Ozturk was
5:21
Speaker 1: apprehended by a group of ICE agents while walking down
5:23
Speaker 1: the street talking to her mom on the phone. There's
5:26
Speaker 1: video of this taken from a neighbor's security camera. Rumesa
5:29
Speaker 1: was handcuffed, put on a plane to Louisiana, and locked
5:33
Speaker 1: up in an ICE facility there. In the month plus
5:36
Speaker 1: that she's been held, she has not been charged with
5:38
Speaker 1: any crime. The only obvious reason that the U.S. government
5:42
Speaker 1: has done this to Urmesa is because of an op-ed
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Speaker 1: that she co-authored with three other graduate students last year
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Speaker 1: in the Tufts Daily, the student newspaper here, urging Tufts
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Speaker 1: to heed resolutions that had passed the student senate, which
5:56
Speaker 1: demanded that the university acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and divest
6:00
Speaker 1: from companies with ties to Israel. In other words, right now,
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Speaker 1: a Tufts student is being imprisoned by the U.S. government
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Speaker 1: because of her journalism. My name is Brian Reed. I
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Speaker 1: host a podcast called Question Everything from KCRW and Placement Theory,
6:15
Speaker 1: where we try to confront the most challenging questions facing journalism.
6:19
Speaker 1: And as my colleagues and I have tracked what happened
6:21
Speaker 1: to Ramesa Ozturk, we're convinced that Tufts is ground zero
6:24
Speaker 1: for arguably the most important story in journalism right now.
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Speaker 1: This country was founded on strong protections for freedom of
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Speaker 1: the press, No one here is supposed to be retaliated
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Speaker 1: against by the government for doing journalism, for voicing opinions,
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Speaker 1: for speaking their mind, not to mention lose their freedom
6:39
Speaker 1: because of it or their right to be here. And
6:42
Speaker 1: I have to say that if the government's goal here
6:43
Speaker 1: is to scare people, to silence opinions it doesn't like,
6:47
Speaker 1: and quash dissent about U.S. foreign policy, about Israel's actions
6:50
Speaker 1: in Gaza, then there's evidence that it is working and
6:53
Speaker 1: that it's working well beyond Tufts. The other day I
6:56
Speaker 1: read a column in the Yale Daily News by their
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Speaker 1: outgoing opinion editor, Milind Singh. expressing his concerns about the
7:02
Speaker 1: way the U.S. government is suppressing student speech. And he
7:05
Speaker 1: mentioned in the column that since Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted
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Speaker 1: here at Tufts, he at Yale had been getting requests
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Speaker 1: from international students and alumni to remove columns they'd already
7:16
Speaker 1: published in the Yale Daily News. Millen told me he's
7:20
Speaker 1: holed up in the library right now studying for finals
7:22
Speaker 1: this week, so he wasn't available to talk on the phone,
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Speaker 1: but he and I have been sending voice memos to
7:26
Speaker 1: each other. Let's listen. This is Brian Reed. voice memoing
7:31
Speaker 1: you from question everything. I know you're in the library studying. Um,
7:36
Speaker 1: I just was interested about that part of your column
7:38
Speaker 1: where you said that you got a bunch of requests
7:40
Speaker 1: from current international students and alumni to, it sounds like
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Speaker 1: scrub their, um, previous articles and columns from the Yale
7:50
Speaker 1: daily news site. I was just wondering if you could
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Speaker 1: say any more about that. And he sent me a
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Speaker 1: voice memo back to Brian.
7:57
Speaker 3: Um, So I received a total of about four to
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Speaker 3: five emails. The tone of all these emails were pretty worried.
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Speaker 3: Some students didn't explicitly mention deportation, but only mentioned being
8:07
Speaker 3: on visa. Some did explicitly mention deportation or immigration status fears.
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Speaker 3: It was palpable that they were worried. All but one
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Speaker 3: of the articles they were concerned about was about Palestine.
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Speaker 5: Or were about Palestine.
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Speaker 3: And one of the articles they were worried about was
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Speaker 3: just the generic anti-Trump piece.
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Speaker 5: Thank you.
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Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I'm just curious, have you had an
8:33
Speaker 1: experience where you've tried to commission pieces or found that
8:36
Speaker 1: people are afraid of writing something in the first place now?
8:39
Speaker 1: Are you noticing the chilling effect in other ways?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we have had some chilling effect on speech. One
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Speaker 3: of the students, a current student, has not submitted anything
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Speaker 3: since they requested. And I imagine that's out of fear of.
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Speaker 3: Of it affecting their immigration status.
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure what was going on there in the library,
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Speaker 1: but he says that one of the students he was
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Speaker 1: writing with hasn't submitted any new columns or writing to
9:09
Speaker 1: the paper since the student requested that their past piece
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Speaker 1: be taken down. The chilling effect's way bigger than I
9:16
Speaker 1: even imagined. After we started promoting this event just a
9:19
Speaker 1: few days ago, we got an email from a place
9:21
Speaker 1: called the Student Press Law Center, which is an organization
9:24
Speaker 1: that gives legal help. and other support to student journalists.
9:27
Speaker 1: And they wanted to let us know that after Rumeza
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Speaker 1: Ozturk's apprehension, they started getting a flood of student journalists
9:33
Speaker 1: from around the country calling or writing into a hotline
9:36
Speaker 1: that they have asking for advice about what to do
9:40
Speaker 1: in the wake of it. The SPLC hotline recently had
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Speaker 1: their busiest week on record. Calls have been up by
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Speaker 1: nearly 40% from this time last year. They told us, quote,
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Speaker 1: the detention of Rumeza Ozturk was a watershed moment.
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Speaker 8: It definitely was you know, after the arrest of Ramesa
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Speaker 8: at Tufts that, you know, I think the alarm bells
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Speaker 8: really started going off and people said, what's going on?
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Speaker 1: This is Mike Heastand. He's been a lawyer at the
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Speaker 1: Student Press Legal Center for 34 years. I just talked
10:09
Speaker 1: to him as I was hustling over to this event
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Speaker 1: like an hour and a half, two hours ago.
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Speaker 8: And particularly as it turned out, you know, that it
10:15
Speaker 8: became clear that the only reason that she was detained
10:19
Speaker 8: and has undergone all that she's undergone here is because
10:23
Speaker 8: of what she published in the op-ed. And if anybody
10:26
Speaker 8: has not read the op-ed that led to all this,
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Speaker 8: they need to do so because it is the sort
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Speaker 8: of op-ed that students have been running for years and years.
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Speaker 8: I remember back in the 80s when I was a
10:40
Speaker 8: student journalist, you know, our student newspaper was calling on
10:42
Speaker 8: our school to divest from, you know, investments in South Africa.
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Speaker 8: So this is nothing new. I mean, it was 100%
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Speaker 8: fully protected speech, at least under the old rules.
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Speaker 1: Taking down stories from the internet, from publication websites like
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Speaker 1: Milan over at Yale, Mike also says that's what he's
11:04
Speaker 1: hearing on these calls. It's the biggest thing. that student
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Speaker 1: journalists are calling in about now that the government's been
11:09
Speaker 1: going after international students?
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Speaker 8: You know, people just asking about, hey, you know, people
11:14
Speaker 8: are asking me to, you know, take down stories that
11:16
Speaker 8: they were sourced in or, you know, again, in some cases,
11:19
Speaker 8: you know, worried about some of their staff that were
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Speaker 8: international students or I even heard from international students themselves
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Speaker 8: who are concerned about this. Those are the calls that
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Speaker 8: we were getting. Should we take it down? Do we
11:31
Speaker 8: need to take it down?
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Speaker 1: How does it feel for you to be kind of
11:35
Speaker 1: inundated with these questions? after doing this for so long,
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Speaker 1: three decades.
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Speaker 8: It blows my mind that I'm having to. I mean,
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Speaker 8: it really is just something that I never would have
11:45
Speaker 8: anticipated we'd even, you know, have to be talking about that.
11:49
Speaker 8: You know, we'd be worried about, you know, if you
11:52
Speaker 8: call on your university to divest of a particular investment,
11:56
Speaker 8: that's going to be enough to completely upend your life,
12:00
Speaker 8: you know, to have you, you know, taken off the
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Speaker 8: city streets and thrown in some detention facility in Louisiana.
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Speaker 8: I mean, it's just insane. So I think just like everybody,
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Speaker 8: we are just trying to figure out what's going on
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Speaker 8: and react the best way that we can while continuing
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Speaker 8: to do the job.
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Speaker 1: Today for Question Everything, we've been working with the wonderful
12:22
Speaker 1: staff of the Tufts Daily to pull together this event
12:25
Speaker 1: where we have student journalists, professional journalists, attorneys, and we're
12:28
Speaker 1: kind of thinking of this as a strategy session to
12:31
Speaker 1: figure out what can we do right now while Rameza
12:33
Speaker 1: Ozturk is being held. And what can we do to
12:36
Speaker 1: try and thaw or at least stop a bit of
12:38
Speaker 1: this chilling effect while keeping people safe? What should we
12:41
Speaker 1: do at this unprecedented moment in our country? Let's get
12:51
Speaker 1: right to it. I want to invite Elora Onion Day
12:54
Speaker 1: on stage from the Tufts Daily.
13:00
Speaker 4: Hi.
13:01
Speaker 1: Elora helps run The Daily as an associate editor and
13:04
Speaker 1: a member of their managing board. You're a sophomore, right,
13:07
Speaker 1: studying international relations from Brooklyn. And Elora is going to
13:11
Speaker 1: take it from here and introduce our first couple of guests. Hi, everyone.
13:15
Speaker 9: I'd love to introduce our first two panelists. We have
13:18
Speaker 9: Robert Birchie, a First Amendment lawyer based here in Boston,
13:23
Speaker 9: and he has decades of experience working with college newspapers
13:27
Speaker 9: and has provided advice to.
13:29
Speaker 1: The Tufts Daily.
13:30
Speaker 9: We also have Carol Rose, the executive director of the
13:33
Speaker 9: ACLU of Massachusetts, and she is part of the team
13:37
Speaker 9: representing Rumesa right now.
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Speaker 2: Thank you.
13:49
Speaker 9: Carol, my first question is for you. I'm wondering if
13:52
Speaker 9: you could take us through what has happened to Rumesa
13:55
Speaker 9: and tell us what was most unsettling for you as you.
13:59
Speaker 7: Learned of it.
13:59
Speaker 10: Right, thank you. First, I just want to say what
14:01
Speaker 10: an honor it is to be here, and especially with
14:04
Speaker 10: the Tufts Daily, where it's sort of been ground zero
14:08
Speaker 10: for a lot of what we're going to be talking
14:09
Speaker 10: about today, and the courage that all of you show,
14:12
Speaker 10: and every journalist out there and would-be journalist, I want
14:14
Speaker 10: to say thank you, because it's so important that the
14:17
Speaker 10: Fourth Estate stay vibrant and robust in our democracy. So, yeah,
14:25
Speaker 10: so what happened is, actually... Five days before Remesa was
14:29
Speaker 10: picked up, the government went in and actually canceled her
14:34
Speaker 10: visa without telling her. And they've subsequently tried to use
14:38
Speaker 10: the fact that her visa is not valid as the
14:40
Speaker 10: reason to imprison her, which is nuts because she had
14:42
Speaker 10: a valid student visa. There was no reason to remove that.
14:46
Speaker 10: And as we've seen from the video, and I hope
14:50
Speaker 10: we can see that video, Ramesa was walking home. She
14:54
Speaker 10: was going to have iftar with her family or their
14:57
Speaker 10: friends or community here, talking to her mom on the phone.
15:01
Speaker 10: And then suddenly she was surrounded by six plainclothes people.
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Speaker 1: We have the video right here, Carol.
15:07
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's right. And I encourage everybody to see that
15:09
Speaker 10: video and to compare that to the op-ed that we
15:11
Speaker 10: just talked about people reading. And you can see this
15:14
Speaker 10: incredible difference between what she wrote, which was incredibly reasoned
15:19
Speaker 10: and peaceful, and then what happened to her on the street.
15:22
Speaker 10: So she was surrounded. She thought she was being kidnapped.
15:25
Speaker 10: She didn't know who they were. They were plainclothes. And
15:28
Speaker 10: then they handcuffed her, they shackled her, and they put
15:31
Speaker 10: her in an unmarked car, and they took her away.
15:35
Speaker 10: So she told her mom, like, call my friend, and
15:38
Speaker 10: the friend knew enough to call Bramesa's immigration attorney, who's
15:43
Speaker 10: been amazing on this case. And that attorney contacted the
15:50
Speaker 10: ACLU because we have a rapid response for what's called
15:54
Speaker 10: habeas petitions. And so that's in the constitutional law. You
15:58
Speaker 10: file a habeas petition, habeas corpus. It means produce the body, right?
16:03
Speaker 10: So that's the basic fundamental legal constitutional right that says
16:07
Speaker 10: that our government isn't supposed to do what they did
16:10
Speaker 10: to Rumesa and just lock you up. for no reason
16:13
Speaker 10: and throw away the key. So we filed the habeas
16:16
Speaker 10: petition right away, the same night. And we couldn't find
16:22
Speaker 10: her for 24 hours. Nobody knew where she was. Her
16:26
Speaker 10: attorney didn't know. Her friends didn't know. We didn't know.
16:29
Speaker 10: We tried going to the US Attorney's Office to get help.
16:32
Speaker 10: We tried going to the Turkish consulate to get help
16:35
Speaker 10: to try to just find her. There was this amazingly
16:37
Speaker 10: frightening dash to try to find. We found her on
16:41
Speaker 10: an ice tracking website.
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Speaker 1: Carol, at that point, did you even know which agency
16:45
Speaker 1: had apprehended her?
16:46
Speaker 11: No.
16:47
Speaker 1: So did you know that it was an agency? Like,
16:49
Speaker 1: what did you know? Or what did you think at
16:51
Speaker 1: that point of a period of uncertainty, I guess?
16:53
Speaker 9: Right.
16:53
Speaker 10: All we knew was that she'd been picked up and
16:55
Speaker 10: somebody had flashed a badge.
16:57
Speaker 2: And so.
16:58
Speaker 1: But it could have been like Boston PD or.
17:00
Speaker 10: It could have been anybody.
17:01
Speaker 2: Right.
17:01
Speaker 10: So we found her on an ICE tracker, but without
17:04
Speaker 10: a location. So at that point, we were able to
17:06
Speaker 10: determine that she had been picked up by ICE, but
17:08
Speaker 10: we didn't know where she was. And so we filed
17:11
Speaker 10: the habeas petition in Massachusetts because that's where she had
17:15
Speaker 10: been picked up. What was happening to her, though, is
17:18
Speaker 10: they drove her around, hopscotching around New England. So they
17:22
Speaker 10: took her up to Methuen, and then they went up
17:25
Speaker 10: to New Hampshire, and then they went over to Vermont.
17:28
Speaker 10: And so at the time we filed, which is 10,
17:31
Speaker 10: 15 p.m., she was in a van in Vermont. And
17:35
Speaker 10: that's really important about where the location is because that's
17:38
Speaker 10: where the habeas petition is supposed to be filed. But
17:41
Speaker 10: before we could find out where she was, they had
17:43
Speaker 10: shipped her 1,300 miles away down to a really notorious,
17:48
Speaker 10: what's called the Black Hole site down in Louisiana. And
17:51
Speaker 10: that's where she is still today.
17:55
Speaker 1: Where does that name come from?
17:57
Speaker 10: The Black Hole name comes from a report that the
18:00
Speaker 10: ACLU of Louisiana did looking at the various detention centers.
18:03
Speaker 10: There's 7,000 people being held. The only state that has
18:06
Speaker 10: more is Texas. So being held down there. So we
18:11
Speaker 10: went into court and we said she should be returned.
18:14
Speaker 10: We filed this writ of habeas corpus and said bring
18:17
Speaker 10: her back. And the government began to fight us about
18:21
Speaker 10: it right away. And so we've been caught up in
18:23
Speaker 10: a jurisdictional battle. So the government initially said, well, she
18:27
Speaker 10: doesn't belong in Massachusetts because she didn't file the habeas
18:29
Speaker 10: in Massachusetts. And so you have to bring the habeas
18:33
Speaker 10: down in Louisiana or throw it out altogether. And the
18:36
Speaker 10: Louisiana courts aren't going to be friendly at all. We
18:39
Speaker 10: know that. And that's why they took her down there.
18:41
Speaker 10: They didn't want to have a fair hearing. We argued
18:45
Speaker 10: that she should either be brought back to Massachusetts or
18:48
Speaker 10: brought to Vermont because that's where she was when we
18:52
Speaker 10: filed the habeas petition. And the same thing happened in
18:56
Speaker 10: the Mahmoud Khalil case when he was picked up in
18:58
Speaker 10: New York and then they shipped him out and they
19:00
Speaker 10: filed the habeas petition in New York, but he was
19:02
Speaker 10: in New Jersey at the time.
19:04
Speaker 1: The Columbia-graded Mumma Khalil, a protester at Columbia who's also
19:07
Speaker 1: been detained?
19:08
Speaker 10: He's also been detained.
19:09
Speaker 1: Without charge, correct?
19:10
Speaker 10: Right, similarly, also being held. So in both of those instances,
19:14
Speaker 10: the courts have ruled, the federal district court, which is
19:17
Speaker 10: your trial court level, they ruled that the jurisdiction should
19:21
Speaker 10: be in Vermont for Remesa and in New Jersey for
19:24
Speaker 10: Mumma Khalil because that's the appropriate place where they were
19:29
Speaker 10: physically when the petition was filed. So that's what we've
19:32
Speaker 10: been fighting over is literally like, where should she be brought?
19:36
Speaker 10: So just last week, the government, the district court in
19:40
Speaker 10: Vermont ruled that in fact, she should be brought back
19:42
Speaker 10: to Vermont and ordered that she be brought back to
19:45
Speaker 10: Vermont by Thursday, May 1st, and that there'll be a
19:49
Speaker 10: bail hearing on the 9th. The government has appealed that
19:54
Speaker 10: to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal, which is in
19:56
Speaker 10: New York. And the Second Circuit has now, yesterday, last night,
20:01
Speaker 10: issued an order that says, okay, we're going to press
20:04
Speaker 10: pause so that we can have time to consider this
20:06
Speaker 10: appeal on the jurisdictional issues itself. And so that hearing
20:10
Speaker 10: is going to be coming up on the 6th, so
20:14
Speaker 10: next Tuesday.
20:15
Speaker 1: So she won't be coming back to Vermont this week?
20:17
Speaker 10: That's correct. That's correct. And so delay is this tactic
20:22
Speaker 10: that we've seen President Trump use in his personal life,
20:27
Speaker 10: in his business dealings, and now the Department of Justice
20:30
Speaker 10: is using these same kinds of delay tactics as a
20:33
Speaker 10: way to prevent people from getting justice in this country.
20:36
Speaker 1: When was the first time you or someone on the
20:38
Speaker 1: legal team spoke The.
20:42
Speaker 10: First time was right after she was picked up when
20:45
Speaker 10: we first found out she was in Louisiana. So that's
20:48
Speaker 10: when her immigration attorney was able to talk to her.
20:53
Speaker 4: On the phone.
20:54
Speaker 1: And what did she learn? What was her demeanor? What
20:55
Speaker 1: was she saying?
20:57
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, she's scared. And she's put this into
20:59
Speaker 10: a declaration that we filed with the court. She's incredibly scared,
21:03
Speaker 10: as you can imagine she would be. And the conditions
21:07
Speaker 10: of confinement are really scary too. She's in a very
21:10
Speaker 10: crowded space with a lot of other women. It's very cold.
21:15
Speaker 10: They took away her hijab, her, her head covering. They,
21:20
Speaker 10: she says there are mice there. And really scary is
21:23
Speaker 10: she has asthma and they took away her medication, her
21:26
Speaker 10: asthma medicine. And so she's had more asthma attacks in
21:30
Speaker 10: the time that she's been down there than in the
21:32
Speaker 10: rest of her life combined. So I'm, you know, conditions
21:36
Speaker 10: of confinement are not good. That's why the report was
21:38
Speaker 10: called the black hole, right? But anytime your liberty is
21:42
Speaker 10: taken away, anytime you're put into a cage, that is
21:45
Speaker 10: when the power of the government is at its greatest.
21:47
Speaker 10: And that's why we have this constitutional protection of the
21:50
Speaker 10: writ of habeas corpus, because taking away your actual liberty
21:53
Speaker 10: and putting you in a cage is just such a
21:56
Speaker 10: fundamental and clear denial of rights. And let's be clear,
21:59
Speaker 10: she has not been accused of any crime, none whatsoever,
22:03
Speaker 10: or any you know, immigration violations. She's only been punished
22:07
Speaker 10: and locked up because she published an op-ed with other
22:10
Speaker 10: students in the Tufts Daily back in 2024. That is
22:15
Speaker 10: the only reason that she's had her liberty taken away.
22:18
Speaker 10: And that cannot stand in a democracy.
22:22
Speaker 9: Thank you, Carol. So you just mentioned that the sole
22:30
Speaker 9: evidence you see is her co-authoring of this op-ed. I
22:34
Speaker 9: want to just hear this clip from Secretary of State
22:36
Speaker 9: Marco Rubio two days after Rumeysa was taken, if we
22:41
Speaker 9: could play that.
22:42
Speaker 11: If you apply for a visa to enter the United
22:43
Speaker 11: States and be a student, and you tell us that
22:46
Speaker 11: the reason why you're coming to the United States is
22:48
Speaker 11: not just because you want to write op-eds, but because
22:50
Speaker 11: you want to participate in movements that are involved in
22:53
Speaker 11: doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings,
22:58
Speaker 11: creating a ruckus.
22:59
Speaker 7: We're not going to give you a visa.
23:01
Speaker 1: We gave you a visa to come and study.
23:03
Speaker 11: And get a degree, not to become a social activist
23:06
Speaker 11: that tears up our university campuses.
23:10
Speaker 9: We want to mention that we invited Secretary Rubio to
23:12
Speaker 9: join us here, but his team said ultimately he was
23:16
Speaker 9: too busy. So, Carol, to clear this up for the record,
23:22
Speaker 9: is there any evidence that this is true? That she
23:25
Speaker 9: has engaged in activities that are destructive?
23:29
Speaker 10: Absolutely nothing. Nothing has been introduced to the court. And
23:32
Speaker 10: in fact, In another feat of good journalism, the Washington
23:35
Speaker 10: Post came out with a story that basically showed that
23:40
Speaker 10: there are actually memos in the State Department that show
23:43
Speaker 10: that they tried and they couldn't find any evidence that
23:47
Speaker 10: she had said anything or done anything anti-Semitic, that she'd
23:50
Speaker 10: said or done anything that supports a terrorist organization, that
23:53
Speaker 10: she's committed any crime. The government admits that, okay? The
23:57
Speaker 10: government admits that. And what Secretary of State Rubio is
24:01
Speaker 10: trying to say is that the rights that all people
24:04
Speaker 10: have in this country, whether they're citizens or non-citizens, like
24:07
Speaker 10: due process, like writ of habeas corpus, like freedom of speech,
24:12
Speaker 10: that they're saying that they're asserting that they can deny that,
24:15
Speaker 10: that they can lock you up simply because they're taking
24:18
Speaker 10: your visa away. And that is not true. That cannot stand.
24:22
Speaker 10: It is not a true statement of the law. And
24:24
Speaker 10: that's exactly what we're fighting about in the court right now.
24:26
Speaker 10: Because the immigration courts and the immigration judges are pushing
24:31
Speaker 10: part of the executive branch of the government. So even
24:35
Speaker 10: though they're called immigration judges, they're administrative judges, and they're
24:38
Speaker 10: actually part of the Department of Justice. So they're in
24:40
Speaker 10: the executive branch. What are called Article III judges, setting
24:44
Speaker 10: forth Article III of the Constitution, are the judges who
24:47
Speaker 10: uphold our constitutional rights. And those are the judges that
24:51
Speaker 10: are appointed for life. And so it's really important that
24:54
Speaker 10: we're trying to say the Article III judges that defend
24:57
Speaker 10: constitutional rights have the proper jurisdiction where the government and
25:01
Speaker 10: Rubio are trying to argue that, no, actually, the executive
25:05
Speaker 10: branch can do whatever we want when it comes to
25:08
Speaker 10: visas and when it comes to due process and when
25:10
Speaker 10: it comes to free speech and when it comes to
25:12
Speaker 10: habeas corpus. And that's simply a misstatement of the law.
25:16
Speaker 10: That's what we're taking to the courts right now. And
25:17
Speaker 10: so far, that's what the courts have cited with the
25:21
Speaker 10: ACLU and other all the lawyers who are arguing on
25:25
Speaker 10: behalf of setting these journalists free and making sure that
25:28
Speaker 10: people like Ramesa Osterk and other people aren't being punished
25:32
Speaker 10: simply for exercising their core protected right to core political speech.
25:37
Speaker 10: It's the most highly protected form of speech under the
25:40
Speaker 10: First Amendment is core protected political speech. And that's all
25:43
Speaker 10: this is. And she's committed no crime. And the government
25:45
Speaker 10: hasn't even asserted that she's committed a crime.
25:48
Speaker 1: That takes me to my first question for Rob, which
25:50
Speaker 1: is like so basic, it almost feels dumb. It's just
25:53
Speaker 1: How can the government do this? Like, don't we have
25:56
Speaker 1: the First Amendment? They can't do this, right? So why
25:59
Speaker 1: is it happening? Like, what am I missing? What are
26:01
Speaker 1: a lot of us not understanding here?
26:03
Speaker 6: You're not missing a thing, unfortunately. This country was built
26:08
Speaker 6: on creating a ruckus. And that's what the First Amendment
26:12
Speaker 6: is about, your right to create a ruckus. And in fact,
26:17
Speaker 6: that that is the way democracy works, that by creating
26:21
Speaker 6: a ruckus, We have a conversation that helps improve the
26:27
Speaker 6: democratic process. This is not normal. And the first time
26:33
Speaker 6: I got the call from a student newspaper asking, what
26:37
Speaker 6: do we do when students ask to take down the
26:41
Speaker 6: op-eds that they have written?
26:42
Speaker 1: Oh, you're getting those calls too?
26:44
Speaker 6: Oh, absolutely.
26:45
Speaker 1: And an uptick recently? Or when did they start?
26:48
Speaker 6: Steadily, yeah.
26:49
Speaker 1: Really? Okay.
26:51
Speaker 2: Okay.
26:51
Speaker 6: And the calls that they are receiving from people who've
26:56
Speaker 6: engaged in protests and are just a subject of a story,
27:02
Speaker 6: their names are mentioned in the story and they want
27:03
Speaker 6: their name out of that story now. We used to
27:07
Speaker 6: say that creates a hole in history. We don't want
27:09
Speaker 6: to take out names from stories for any reason other
27:13
Speaker 6: than that they were false and we made a mistake.
27:17
Speaker 6: But those rules don't apply anymore. Mike Heaston said in
27:21
Speaker 6: the clip we heard that it used to be under
27:25
Speaker 6: the First Amendment that we didn't allow this sort of thing.
27:30
Speaker 6: I don't know what the rules are now. I know
27:33
Speaker 6: what I want the rules to be. But when a
27:36
Speaker 6: person comes to my office and says to me, should
27:41
Speaker 6: I write this op-ed? Should I put myself out there?
27:44
Speaker 6: I'm an international student. What should I do? As their lawyer,
27:51
Speaker 6: I can't encourage them to write that op-ed. That goes
27:55
Speaker 6: against every fiber in my being. But to protect themselves
28:02
Speaker 6: under this administration, I can't encourage them to do that.
28:07
Speaker 1: Discouraging them from voicing their opinion is what that goes
28:10
Speaker 1: against every fiber of your being.
28:12
Speaker 7: Yeah.
28:13
Speaker 1: So this is a new, basically, position of legal advice
28:17
Speaker 1: that you're giving to people. Is that right? Well, absolutely.
28:20
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, in 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court
28:23
Speaker 6: decided a case called New York Times against Sullivan, one
28:27
Speaker 6: of the most important First Amendment cases of our time.
28:30
Speaker 1: We just did a two-part series on it last week.
28:31
Speaker 1: Go check it out. It's in your feed right now.
28:33
Speaker 1: It's in your feed the last two episodes.
28:36
Speaker 6: But one of the concerns in that case that the
28:38
Speaker 6: Supreme Court had was the concern that we needed to
28:45
Speaker 6: allow space for around free speech. We needed to allow
28:51
Speaker 6: innocent error to be tolerated in our society, because otherwise
28:55
Speaker 6: you would create a chilling effect. You would chill people
28:59
Speaker 6: from going anywhere near the borderline between truth and falsity,
29:04
Speaker 6: and that would discourage civic discourse. We're beyond chilling now.
29:10
Speaker 6: We're frozen. We're absolutely frozen.
29:13
Speaker 2: And the.
29:16
Speaker 6: Other parallel I'll say, Brian, to the New York Times
29:20
Speaker 6: against Sullivan case is that the worry there was that
29:23
Speaker 6: the decisions were all going to be made in the
29:25
Speaker 6: courts of Alabama at a time of great segregation.
29:30
Speaker 2: Right.
29:30
Speaker 1: It was initially a civil rights case. It was about
29:32
Speaker 1: a civil rights ad that was being run in the
29:33
Speaker 1: New York Times.
29:34
Speaker 6: It was a civil rights case, as this is a
29:38
Speaker 6: civil rights case as well. And the worry was that
29:42
Speaker 6: the courts of Alabama were going to decide this case.
29:45
Speaker 6: And when the courts of Alabama decided the case, they
29:47
Speaker 6: decided against the New York Times. And it was only
29:53
Speaker 6: when it came to the Supreme Court that that was overturned.
29:59
Speaker 6: We have the same issue here. Carroll's fighting so hard
30:02
Speaker 6: to get this decided in Vermont instead of Louisiana, at
30:06
Speaker 6: least in part. Tell me if I'm wrong, because we
30:10
Speaker 6: know how the Louisiana court is likely to judge, and
30:13
Speaker 6: we have a sense of how the Vermont federal district
30:16
Speaker 6: court is likely to decide.
30:19
Speaker 9: There's something I'd like to clear up that I think
30:21
Speaker 9: has been a source of confusion for a lot of people,
30:25
Speaker 9: and it's the question of are non-citizens protected under the
30:29
Speaker 9: First Amendment and to what degree?
30:31
Speaker 6: Yes.
30:32
Speaker 2: Okay.
30:33
Speaker 9: There's your answer. Are they being targeted by the government
30:42
Speaker 9: because of their sort of vulnerability of their immigration status?
30:46
Speaker 6: I think that's very clear and I think that's purposeful
30:49
Speaker 6: and I think Secretary Rubio's comments confirm that.
30:54
Speaker 1: So legally, constitutionally, non-citizens are equally as protected or supposed
31:00
Speaker 1: to be under the First Amendment. But I'm just trying
31:02
Speaker 1: to kind of process this or regurgitate it back. But
31:05
Speaker 1: the government does have this extra lever they can pull
31:08
Speaker 1: with a visa. That's right. Basically to try and leverage
31:13
Speaker 1: against somebody whose speech they don't like technically.
31:16
Speaker 5: Right.
31:16
Speaker 10: So as a constitutional matter, free speech and due process,
31:20
Speaker 10: those are constitutional protections for every person in the United States,
31:24
Speaker 10: regardless of your immigration status.
31:27
Speaker 1: And that's been found by the Supreme Court in the past? Yes.
31:30
Speaker 10: So what the government is trying to do here is
31:32
Speaker 10: to say that a different statute, a law called the
31:35
Speaker 10: Immigration and Nationalization Act, somehow trumps the Constitution. So it's
31:41
Speaker 10: a whole different body of law where there's a lot
31:44
Speaker 10: of deference given to the executive branch to sort of say,
31:46
Speaker 10: who do I want to give a visa to? Who
31:48
Speaker 10: do I not want to give a visa to? And
31:50
Speaker 10: what the government is arguing is that that power should
31:53
Speaker 10: trump our constitutional rights, which makes no sense. I mean,
31:57
Speaker 10: that's just simply not true. So they're trying to change
32:00
Speaker 10: the law by saying that the constitutional protections that extend
32:03
Speaker 10: to all people by virtue of being in this country
32:06
Speaker 10: somehow get trumped when they decide to take away people's visas.
32:11
Speaker 10: and take away their rights as an immigration matter. And
32:14
Speaker 10: we're arguing that's not the way the law should be read,
32:17
Speaker 10: and that's not what the law has been historically. So
32:19
Speaker 10: we'll see what happens in the courts. But that's exactly
32:22
Speaker 10: where the issues are being judged.
32:23
Speaker 1: Are there past examples or cases that you've looked at
32:26
Speaker 1: or that we can look to, like Red Scare, McCarthyism times?
32:29
Speaker 1: I've read a bit about cases where the government during
32:33
Speaker 1: that time tried to deport someone for being a member
32:35
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party, for instance. Like, are there things
32:38
Speaker 1: that you are looking at and that the government's relying
32:40
Speaker 1: on to say we can do this actually?
32:42
Speaker 2: Sure.
32:42
Speaker 10: I mean, both sides are bringing out all the cases
32:44
Speaker 10: and saying it's analogous or it's similar or things like that. Um,
32:48
Speaker 10: but the reality of it is, is they don't really
32:50
Speaker 10: have a very strong case here because these fundamental constitutional
32:53
Speaker 10: rights like habeas corpus, free speech, due process, historically those
32:58
Speaker 10: have always extended to all people who are in this country. Um,
33:01
Speaker 10: so they're, they're making these arguments, um, I don't think
33:05
Speaker 10: they're going to win. And so far in the district
33:07
Speaker 10: courts and the federal courts, both the court in Vermont,
33:10
Speaker 10: where the federal court ruled no, bring her back. We're
33:13
Speaker 10: going to have the hearing here in Vermont. But similarly,
33:15
Speaker 10: just a few minutes ago, there was a ruling from
33:18
Speaker 10: the district court in New Jersey in the Mahmoud Khalil
33:21
Speaker 10: case saying similarly, no, she should come back in front
33:24
Speaker 10: of an Article III, a constitutional judge. He should come
33:28
Speaker 10: back and be heard in this court. He's a legal
33:31
Speaker 10: permanent resident. So it's even more sort of interesting that
33:36
Speaker 10: they're trying to argue that he could have his legal
33:40
Speaker 10: permanent status taken away. And so we're seeing these different
33:44
Speaker 10: arguments being played out. But the situation with Ramesa is
33:48
Speaker 10: particularly alarming because, you know, whereas, you know, some of
33:51
Speaker 10: the other people who are being detained actually engaged in
33:54
Speaker 10: student activism, legal student activism. She literally has done nothing
34:00
Speaker 10: but sign an op-ed. You know, and the Tufts president,
34:05
Speaker 10: you know, Sunil Kumar and others have said in court,
34:09
Speaker 10: she didn't violate any of the Tufts rules of student conduct.
34:12
Speaker 10: She didn't violate any of the campus policies. She's really
34:16
Speaker 10: involved in like child development, childhood development and working with children.
34:21
Speaker 10: And that's really her passion. And so the fact that
34:24
Speaker 10: they decided to pick her out of all the people
34:26
Speaker 10: they could because she co-signed an op-ed in the, you know,
34:31
Speaker 10: is particularly alarming because if they are allowed to get
34:33
Speaker 10: away with her, then they'll probably try it with a
34:37
Speaker 10: lot of other people.
34:37
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Like, what is it actually about?
34:40
Speaker 1: Do you have insight into that, either of you, from
34:42
Speaker 1: reading about the case, from disclosures in the case? Like,
34:45
Speaker 1: what's the government's motivation here, actually? Is this about free speech?
34:50
Speaker 1: Is this about immigration? Is it about Palestine? Like, what
34:53
Speaker 1: is going on?
34:54
Speaker 10: I think it's about attacking our democracy. I think it's
34:57
Speaker 10: about literally dismantling our universities. And they've said they want
35:01
Speaker 10: to dismantle the universities. I think it's about dismantling the
35:05
Speaker 10: rule of law and going after law firms. I think
35:07
Speaker 10: it's about dismantling the right to vote. I think it's
35:13
Speaker 10: about dismantling science. And this is all about a power grab.
35:17
Speaker 10: I mean, this isn't a dress rehearsal. This is really
35:20
Speaker 10: about the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in our country.
35:24
Speaker 10: And it's incumbent upon all of us, and particularly those
35:27
Speaker 10: of us who have a little bit more, maybe a
35:30
Speaker 10: lot more legal protection because we're citizens, that we need
35:33
Speaker 10: to raise our voices where others are unable to do so.
35:40
Speaker 6: I'd add that it's about administrative power. That chilling effect
35:45
Speaker 6: is happening in all areas, as Carol notes, education, journalism,
35:51
Speaker 6: you name it, immigration obviously here. And the challenge from
35:56
Speaker 6: the public's point of view is, is the courts are slow.
36:01
Speaker 6: And the administration is working awfully fast. Think what has
36:04
Speaker 6: happened in the last 100 days. And the courts are
36:08
Speaker 6: still talking about jurisdiction in these cases. And that, for me,
36:12
Speaker 6: is awfully frustrating because Rumesa is not getting asthma medication
36:16
Speaker 6: while the lawyers are arguing about the fine points of jurisdiction,
36:21
Speaker 6: which seem very important when you're in law school but
36:25
Speaker 6: seem marginal when you're talking about somebody's life.
36:31
Speaker 9: How does that change legal strategies when everything is being rewritten?
36:37
Speaker 10: Well, you know, I think part of it is, you know,
36:38
Speaker 10: I always say democracy is like a muscle. And the
36:41
Speaker 10: more we lean into it, the more we flex it,
36:44
Speaker 10: the stronger it gets. And so I think actually invoking
36:47
Speaker 10: the power of the courts, invoking the power of journalism,
36:50
Speaker 10: invoking the power of our universities. These are really important
36:53
Speaker 10: people marching and protesting. It really matters. And the law is,
36:57
Speaker 10: as Ram says, incredibly slow. But you know what? Those
37:00
Speaker 10: are speed bumps, too. And a lot of those speed
37:03
Speaker 10: bumps are going to become traffic bollards. They're going to
37:06
Speaker 10: stop them. So I do think the courts and the
37:09
Speaker 10: law has an incredibly important role to play. And everybody says, well,
37:13
Speaker 10: they had all this time to get ready.
37:14
Speaker 2: Well, you know what?
37:15
Speaker 1: So did we. And we are ready.
37:18
Speaker 10: And we've been meeting them. The ACLU has now filed
37:20
Speaker 10: 100 legal actions in the first 100 days. So we
37:24
Speaker 10: are in all 50 states. and across the country. And
37:28
Speaker 10: we are fighting them at every step of the way,
37:30
Speaker 10: and we will continue to do so. But we also
37:33
Speaker 10: need the people who take to the streets and who
37:34
Speaker 10: write op-eds and who continue to do the stories and
37:37
Speaker 10: who continue to do the podcasts and continue to listen
37:40
Speaker 10: to the podcasts. Everything that we can do, whatever you
37:43
Speaker 10: can do within your power, within your sphere of influence,
37:46
Speaker 10: now's the time to do it. It's an all-hands-on-deck moment.
37:49
Speaker 10: And we can't afford to say, well, we're going to
37:52
Speaker 10: leave it to the courts or leave it to the
37:53
Speaker 10: journalists or leave it to the protesters. Every one of
37:56
Speaker 10: us has to be in this fight right now. And
37:59
Speaker 10: I think that if we all come together and we're
38:01
Speaker 10: able to do this, we will, in fact, hold them
38:03
Speaker 10: off and turn the tide.
38:05
Speaker 6: And we can't leave it to the international students either,
38:08
Speaker 6: because they're the ones who are most in peril about
38:11
Speaker 6: speaking out. So the rest of us have an obligation
38:14
Speaker 6: to be doing that.
38:21
Speaker 1: I appreciate that spirit, not to be a Debbie Downer here, but.
38:25
Speaker 1: I heard you say earlier, Carol, that like, you're pretty
38:27
Speaker 1: confident you're going to eventually win when we raise this case,
38:29
Speaker 1: you're going to appeal and say this was protected speech,
38:32
Speaker 1: she's been retaliated against, it's unconstitutional. But have they already won?
38:38
Speaker 1: I mean, we're hearing like, as I played in the beginning,
38:42
Speaker 1: you know, that people are not publishing things they want
38:45
Speaker 1: to publish, they're not speaking their mind. You know, Rob,
38:47
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you even have an anecdote of a
38:49
Speaker 1: conversation you had in the last few weeks, if you
38:51
Speaker 1: say that you're having these conversations and advising people not
38:54
Speaker 1: to speak, like, Has the damage been done? And how
38:56
Speaker 1: do you roll that chilling effect back? Can you?
39:00
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, I think you're absolutely right. And we have crossed
39:03
Speaker 6: a Rubicon that I don't think we can go back upon.
39:08
Speaker 6: You know, we are not going to have international students
39:12
Speaker 6: come to the United States in nearly the same numbers anymore.
39:17
Speaker 6: Because sensibly, they say the United States is too dangerous
39:22
Speaker 6: a place for us to send our sons and daughters to.
39:27
Speaker 1: How about the effect on speech of people who are here, too?
39:30
Speaker 6: Same thing. Same thing. You know, you are taking that
39:35
Speaker 6: much of a risk if you speak out. You know,
39:39
Speaker 6: nobody wants to have to go through what Rumeso Ozturk
39:43
Speaker 6: is going through. Even if you win in the end,
39:48
Speaker 6: you don't want to be subjected to that.
39:50
Speaker 1: You said you've had to have some conversations that go
39:52
Speaker 1: against the fiber of your being recently. Can you share
39:56
Speaker 1: one that you're able to talk about in some way?
39:58
Speaker 6: I have found myself in a upside down world because
40:05
Speaker 6: I'm asked, well, can we, should we take this down
40:11
Speaker 6: from our newspaper? Can I publish this dissenting voice? And
40:20
Speaker 6: Last year, I'd have said, hell yeah, absolutely. That's what
40:25
Speaker 6: it's all about. That's what journalism is all about. I
40:30
Speaker 6: can't say that anymore with a straight face and protecting
40:34
Speaker 6: my client. I can say it in the abstract, but
40:38
Speaker 6: I can't say it if I'm really protecting my client.
40:41
Speaker 6: They have to make a decision for themselves. And What
40:48
Speaker 6: I thought the First Amendment said, well, maybe it says
40:52
Speaker 6: it in the law books. Maybe it says it in
40:54
Speaker 6: the case law. But right now, in the courts, in
40:59
Speaker 6: the way that the administration is proceeding, the First Amendment
41:07
Speaker 6: is cracked.
41:09
Speaker 1: And is this the best we can do right now? Like,
41:11
Speaker 1: is there anything we can do to repair that crack
41:13
Speaker 1: so that you can feel more comfortable saying, you know what,
41:16
Speaker 1: I think you actually can't publish it. I think it'll
41:18
Speaker 1: be okay. Like brass tacks. What can we be doing legally, journalistically, civically?
41:24
Speaker 6: I think we have to, those of us who can
41:26
Speaker 6: have to resist in every single way we can, both
41:29
Speaker 6: through protests, through courts, through op-eds, through, you know, I
41:37
Speaker 6: don't know a better way.
41:38
Speaker 1: How does that work exactly? How does that stop it?
41:41
Speaker 1: Take me through the dream version.
41:43
Speaker 6: At some point, the public, I believe I'm built on
41:51
Speaker 6: the optimism that that can have an effect.
41:57
Speaker 10: And I would just add, you know, hope is a
41:58
Speaker 10: political act and courage is contagious. And so we saw initially,
42:02
Speaker 10: for example, with the law firms that some of them
42:04
Speaker 10: backed down and then others came forward like WilmerHale and
42:07
Speaker 10: Perkins Coie and said, no, we're going to fight back.
42:11
Speaker 10: And when they did, it became OK. And then 700
42:14
Speaker 10: law firms signed on. We saw the same thing with
42:16
Speaker 10: the universities. You know, when Columbia initially backed down and
42:19
Speaker 10: then it looked like that was just the beginning of
42:20
Speaker 10: the negotiation. And then we've seen, you know, Tufts and
42:23
Speaker 10: Harvard and Williams and other colleges come forward and be
42:27
Speaker 10: courageous and give permission to other people to be courageous.
42:31
Speaker 10: And when people come out on the streets, it really
42:32
Speaker 10: makes a big difference. When people came out for the
42:34
Speaker 10: hands-off event, it was incredible. And right after that, we
42:38
Speaker 10: had members of Congress take a delegation, go down to
42:41
Speaker 10: Louisiana and to visit Rameza Ozturk. in that black hole
42:44
Speaker 10: where she's being held and to shine a light on that.
42:47
Speaker 10: We saw members of Congress going down to El Salvador
42:52
Speaker 10: and looking at the people in prison there. I think
42:54
Speaker 10: it's incredibly important that we take every action because when
42:58
Speaker 10: we do, we don't give in to despair because authoritarians
43:02
Speaker 10: want us to give in to despair. They want us
43:03
Speaker 10: to give in to fear. And they're the playground bullies.
43:07
Speaker 10: The playground bully always goes back to the person who
43:10
Speaker 10: they can punch and take their lunch money. But the
43:12
Speaker 10: person who punches back, they don't go to them again.
43:15
Speaker 10: They go back to the person who backs down. So
43:17
Speaker 10: it's incredibly important that all of us in whatever positions
43:21
Speaker 10: that we have, and particularly those of us in positions
43:23
Speaker 10: of privilege, for example, U.S. citizens, that we raise our voices,
43:27
Speaker 10: that we speak out. There is safety in numbers. And
43:31
Speaker 10: we just simply cannot afford to spare. We have to
43:34
Speaker 10: go forward. We have to overcome our fear. This is
43:36
Speaker 10: our generation's moment to speak out, to stand up, to march,
43:40
Speaker 10: to fight, to do whatever you can to fight back
43:43
Speaker 10: so that the people who don't have as much privilege
43:46
Speaker 10: and power as we do are able to also live
43:49
Speaker 10: in peace and have their rights protected. So, you know,
43:52
Speaker 10: I don't have hope because I think we're necessarily going
43:56
Speaker 10: to overcome it. I have hope because I know that
43:58
Speaker 10: through action, hope is generated and hope is contagious and
44:01
Speaker 10: courage is contagious And it's time for all of us
44:03
Speaker 10: to do our bit to make sure we defend the
44:06
Speaker 10: democracy that 250 years ago our ancestors defended. Now it's
44:11
Speaker 10: our turn. And I'm damn sure that I'm going to
44:14
Speaker 10: spend my life doing that.
44:20
Speaker 1: Thank you, Carol Rose of the ACLU and First Amendment
44:23
Speaker 1: attorney Rob Birchie. Coming up, what advice do professional journalists
44:28
Speaker 1: have for student journalists like those here at the Tufts Daily,
44:31
Speaker 1: a student editor-in-chief? gets to ask for advice from one
44:34
Speaker 1: of the most legendary pro-editors out there. That's after a
44:37
Speaker 1: quick break. Welcome back to Question Everything. We're live here
44:52
Speaker 1: at Tufts University. I'm here with the editor-in-chief of the
44:55
Speaker 1: Tufts Daily, Argya Talapragada. Arge, you're a junior from Lynchburg, Virginia, right?
45:01
Speaker 1: And you're studying engineering and philosophy?
45:03
Speaker 9: Yes.
45:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's remarkable that you're at this moment
45:14
Speaker 1: kind of having to shepherd the Tufts daily through this
45:16
Speaker 1: very intense time where a Tufts student has been detained
45:20
Speaker 1: and threatened with deportation for an op-ed that they co-authored
45:23
Speaker 1: in your publication. And so this is kind of, I think,
45:26
Speaker 1: an opportunity for you, I hope, to ask some pros
45:28
Speaker 1: about what they would do if they were in your position.
45:30
Speaker 1: And so to do that, we have Akayla Lacey from
45:33
Speaker 1: The Intercept. Akayla, are you out here? Akayla is a
45:40
Speaker 1: senior politics reporter at The Intercept. And in this second
45:44
Speaker 1: Trump administration, she's been covering protests, turmoil, speech, and the
45:48
Speaker 1: government's influence on college campuses across the country. And we're
45:51
Speaker 1: also joined remotely here by Marty Barron. Marty. Hi, Marty.
45:56
Speaker 1: Hope you can see us. Marty was executive editor of
46:00
Speaker 1: the Washington Post for eight years, I believe, including during
46:04
Speaker 1: the first Trump term. And before that, he was editor
46:07
Speaker 1: of the hometown paper here, the Boston Globe, and oversaw,
46:10
Speaker 1: among many other things, the investigation into sexual abuse in
46:13
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church. Argie, I think take it away. What
46:18
Speaker 1: questions you got for these guys?
46:19
Speaker 12: Thank you, Brian. So my first question is for you, Akayla.
46:23
Speaker 12: So you're reporting on college campuses all across the country.
46:27
Speaker 12: I want to know about the impact of Rumeysa's case.
46:29
Speaker 12: So are you hearing about columns being canceled or pieces
46:33
Speaker 12: being scrubbed, student writers making tough decisions on what to
46:37
Speaker 12: say or publish? Essentially, what we want to know is,
46:39
Speaker 12: is this having a chilling effect?
46:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Rumeysa's case was obviously one of the biggest
46:47
Speaker 4: escalations that we've seen on the crackdown on college campuses
46:50
Speaker 4: that started, you know, last year prior to this administration
46:54
Speaker 4: and I've heard from students at other schools who have
46:58
Speaker 4: been disciplined by their schools for writing op-eds, no one
47:02
Speaker 4: who has been abducted.
47:03
Speaker 7: Or detained by ICE.
47:04
Speaker 4: But this is, I think, as you heard on the
47:08
Speaker 4: previous segment, this is causing a lot of people to question,
47:11
Speaker 4: you know, student journalists, do I want to try to
47:13
Speaker 4: pursue a career in this field? Is it possible for
47:17
Speaker 4: me to pursue a career in this field and to
47:18
Speaker 4: continue reporting and writing about the things that I believe in?
47:23
Speaker 4: And we also see students trying to figure out how
47:28
Speaker 4: to take things into their own hands when they see
47:31
Speaker 4: their administrators or the leaders of their schools backing down
47:36
Speaker 4: in the face of these incredible attacks against them and
47:38
Speaker 4: not sticking to the principles of academic freedom, public discourse,
47:46
Speaker 4: and the exchange of ideas, these things that our universities
47:49
Speaker 4: are supposedly built on. students are saying, okay, well, you're
47:52
Speaker 4: saying that, and then you're calling the cops in to
47:55
Speaker 4: arrest my friends. You're telling me that I'm getting a
47:58
Speaker 4: disciplinary charge for an op-ed that I wrote two years
48:01
Speaker 4: ago because Congress is threatening to withhold money from our
48:04
Speaker 4: school now. And so I am trying to encourage students
48:07
Speaker 4: to keep their heads up.
48:09
Speaker 7: As difficult as that can be. But the chilling effect
48:13
Speaker 7: is terrifying.
48:14
Speaker 4: And I don't think that we've really, despite the intense
48:17
Speaker 4: escalation that we've seen over the last four or five months,
48:20
Speaker 4: I don't think that we have sort of the capacity
48:24
Speaker 4: to understand the ramifications of this for the future.
48:27
Speaker 1: Kayla, is there like a moment or interaction you've had
48:29
Speaker 1: with a student in your reporting where it kind of
48:31
Speaker 1: hit you? What's happening? Is there one that you could
48:33
Speaker 1: share with us?
48:35
Speaker 9: Yeah.
48:35
Speaker 4: So talking to student protesters, I've had iterations of this
48:40
Speaker 4: conversation multiple times, but We were covering sort of protests
48:45
Speaker 4: at Rust Belt colleges throughout the country where there had
48:48
Speaker 4: been a lot of attention on, you know, the Northeast
48:50
Speaker 4: and Ivy League universities. And we wanted to show what
48:53
Speaker 4: working class students were going through and putting themselves on
48:57
Speaker 4: the line during this time. And one student at the
49:01
Speaker 4: end of our conversation said, said, you know, no matter
49:05
Speaker 4: what they do, it's only making us stronger. Like what
49:09
Speaker 4: schools are doing is actually having the opposite effect, a
49:12
Speaker 4: backfiring effect in strengthening the resolve that students have, whether
49:16
Speaker 4: they're protesting or organizing on their campuses, that no matter
49:21
Speaker 4: what happens and what they throw at them, there's no
49:23
Speaker 4: way that this is going to go away. And I've
49:25
Speaker 4: heard iterations of that over and over again, but that
49:28
Speaker 4: is what has stuck with me. And what I don't
49:30
Speaker 4: quite think my generation or older generations can necessarily understand
49:34
Speaker 4: grasp all the time when we're talking about this that,
49:39
Speaker 4: you know, while people are afraid, it's actually making it
49:42
Speaker 4: harder for the administration to keep this up going forward
49:46
Speaker 4: because there's going to be, they're only strengthening the backlash
49:51
Speaker 4: from people who no longer have faith in the government
49:54
Speaker 4: and no longer have faith in the university system.
49:57
Speaker 12: You published something recently, four days ago, I think, about
50:00
Speaker 12: the Barnard administration called a bomb threat targeted student protesters.
50:04
Speaker 12: So why did they get blamed for it? And this
50:07
Speaker 12: jumped out at me as a student because, you know,
50:10
Speaker 12: the administration is supposed to be something that the students
50:13
Speaker 12: can trust in these times. So I just want to know, like,
50:15
Speaker 12: can you talk us through what happened there?
50:18
Speaker 4: Yeah.
50:18
Speaker 7: So thank you for mentioning that story.
50:20
Speaker 4: Uh, A source reached out to me a few weeks
50:23
Speaker 4: ago about this incident that took place on Barnard's campus
50:27
Speaker 4: in New York last month, where student protesters held a
50:32
Speaker 4: sit-in protesting Israel's war on Gaza at a building on
50:37
Speaker 4: campus where the library was housed. And that day, the
50:40
Speaker 4: school also received a bomb threat by email. And basically,
50:47
Speaker 4: police were called to campus. Nine students were arrested. for
50:51
Speaker 4: refusing evacuation orders. And the story that came out from
50:55
Speaker 4: the school and the next day in media coverage was
50:58
Speaker 4: that nine students had been arrested at this protest after
51:01
Speaker 4: there was a bomb threat. And the takeaway, if you're
51:04
Speaker 4: not paying attention, is an assumption that the students.
51:08
Speaker 7: Were responsible for the threat.
51:10
Speaker 4: The school president, Laura Ann Rosenberry, also later blamed the
51:14
Speaker 4: student protesters for putting the entire community at risk for
51:17
Speaker 4: not evacuating the campus because of the threat. what we
51:21
Speaker 4: found out was that the threat specifically targeted pro-Palestine protesters.
51:26
Speaker 4: The language, I won't repeat it because it's derogatory and inappropriate,
51:31
Speaker 4: but it was very clear who they were targeting. And
51:35
Speaker 4: the school never told the students, to my knowledge, the
51:38
Speaker 4: school has still not told.
51:39
Speaker 7: The students that they were the target of this bomb threat.
51:43
Speaker 4: It was leaked basically to a couple of faculty members
51:46
Speaker 4: who discussed it a few days later. And in conversations
51:51
Speaker 4: with attorneys who have been working with these students and
51:53
Speaker 4: faculty who have been supporting them, they thought it was
51:56
Speaker 4: outrageous that over a month later, there was still no
52:00
Speaker 4: indication from the school that its student body had been
52:03
Speaker 4: specifically targeted in what it said was a credible bomb
52:06
Speaker 4: threat that required them to call the NYPD to campus.
52:10
Speaker 4: Some other questions that were raised in the course of
52:12
Speaker 4: reporting this story was when and.
52:14
Speaker 7: Why the school actually called police to campus.
52:17
Speaker 4: There were competing reports where at first the NYPD told
52:22
Speaker 4: another group of intrepid student journalists at the Columbia Spectator
52:25
Speaker 4: that they came to the school because of a, quote,
52:27
Speaker 4: unscheduled demonstration and had no knowledge of a bomb threat.
52:32
Speaker 4: A couple days later, they changed their statement and said
52:34
Speaker 4: that they were called because of the bomb threat. The
52:36
Speaker 4: school maintained the whole time that they called the police
52:38
Speaker 4: because of the bomb threat.
52:40
Speaker 7: But we have multiple sources who said they saw.
52:42
Speaker 4: The police, the SRG, the Strategic Response Group, which is
52:47
Speaker 4: responsible for policing protests, not the bomb squad. outside of
52:50
Speaker 4: this college campus building, 30 minutes before the bomb threat
52:54
Speaker 4: came in. So our story was about the two tendrils
52:58
Speaker 4: of this, which are Barnard, again, calling police to arrest
53:03
Speaker 4: its own students and hiding for over a month that
53:08
Speaker 4: its students were a specific target of a bomb threat
53:10
Speaker 4: on campus. This is also all happening while Barnard is
53:14
Speaker 4: being pressured to turn over information about its students to
53:17
Speaker 4: Congress which says that it's conducting an investigation into antisemitism
53:21
Speaker 4: on campus and where Republicans have repeatedly painted student protesters
53:27
Speaker 4: as terrorists. And faculty and students at Barnard are now
53:30
Speaker 4: concerned that, you know, their students are now being interrogated
53:34
Speaker 4: about this bomb threat in meetings that could eventually be
53:38
Speaker 4: turned over to Congress and result in either immigration or
53:42
Speaker 4: criminal charges against these students.
53:45
Speaker 12: So switching gears to Marty, I wanted to ask, um,
53:49
Speaker 12: what happened to Rumeysa really hit us at the daily
53:52
Speaker 12: pretty hard, but admittedly as college students, we haven't had, um,
53:56
Speaker 12: we haven't spent that much time in journalism, but you
53:58
Speaker 12: on the other hand have run two major newsrooms, been
54:00
Speaker 12: a professional journalist for decades. Um, I want to know,
54:03
Speaker 12: did this jump out as something that's new to you
54:06
Speaker 12: in your career? Can you think of a time where
54:08
Speaker 12: anything happened that was like this?
54:12
Speaker 5: Well, um, I haven't seen this on college campuses before,
54:15
Speaker 5: but I've certainly had something similar and I would say
54:19
Speaker 5: worse in my experience as an editor at the Washington Post.
54:25
Speaker 5: So in July of 2014, our correspondent in Iran, Jason Rezaian,
54:32
Speaker 5: was arrested along with his wife. She was held for
54:36
Speaker 5: 72 days. He was held for 544 days in prison,
54:41
Speaker 5: much of that time in solitary. and in the worst
54:44
Speaker 5: prison in Iran, which is pretty bad. You know, it's
54:47
Speaker 5: interesting because in this particular case of Rumeysa, you know,
54:54
Speaker 5: the State Department is making all these allegations, Marco Rubio
54:58
Speaker 5: claiming that her activities could have potentially serious consequences for
55:02
Speaker 5: American foreign policy, all of that, a lot of exaggerated
55:07
Speaker 5: language and exaggerated conclusions about a simple op-ed that she co-authored.
55:12
Speaker 5: And in the case of Jason, an Iranian interrogator asked
55:15
Speaker 5: him after he had been arrested, do you know why
55:17
Speaker 5: you're here? And he said, no, he had no idea
55:19
Speaker 5: why he was there. And he said, you are the
55:22
Speaker 5: head of the CIA station in Tehran, of course, which
55:26
Speaker 5: was complete nonsense. And he was tried on that basis
55:29
Speaker 5: and tried for espionage, which he, of course, did not commit.
55:32
Speaker 5: He was convicted in a sham trial, a kangaroo court.
55:36
Speaker 5: And we were very concerned about what might happen to
55:38
Speaker 5: him and how long he would be in prison there. Thankfully,
55:41
Speaker 5: he was ultimately released as part of a big deal. But,
55:44
Speaker 5: you know, those are the kinds of preposterous allegations that
55:47
Speaker 5: are made in a place like Iran. And then you
55:49
Speaker 5: hear these preposterous allegations made by the Secretary of State
55:54
Speaker 5: here in the United States. The second case that I
55:56
Speaker 5: would mention was the assassination in 2018 of Jamal Khashoggi,
56:01
Speaker 5: who was an opinion writer, a guest opinion writer for
56:05
Speaker 5: The Washington Post. He's a Saudi national, but he had...
56:10
Speaker 5: permanent residency here in the United States. He was living
56:13
Speaker 5: in Turkey at the time. He went into the Saudi
56:16
Speaker 5: consulate in Istanbul to obtain some papers so that he
56:19
Speaker 5: could get married, and he never came out. The Saudis
56:23
Speaker 5: claimed that he had left, but the Turkish government said
56:27
Speaker 5: that he had not left, and it turned out that,
56:29
Speaker 5: of course, he had not left. He was assassinated there
56:32
Speaker 5: in the consulate. He was completely dismembered. We don't know
56:36
Speaker 5: where his body was ultimately disposed of, or what exactly
56:41
Speaker 5: happened to him. He had simply written a number of
56:44
Speaker 5: columns critical of the Saudi government, one of the most
56:47
Speaker 5: recent ones being criticism of the Saudi war in Yemen,
56:51
Speaker 5: which at the time was called by the UN the
56:53
Speaker 5: greatest humanitarian disaster in the world. And of course, in
56:57
Speaker 5: that instance, Trump did absolutely nothing on his behalf. At
57:01
Speaker 5: various times, he expressed concern, but at other times, he
57:04
Speaker 5: expressed total credibility in what the Saudi crown prince was saying.
57:08
Speaker 5: The Saudi crown prince was later found by the CIA
57:11
Speaker 5: with great confidence, was found to have actually ordered an
57:14
Speaker 5: assassination squad to go to Turkey in order to either
57:18
Speaker 5: kidnap or murder our columnist. And Trump did nothing because
57:24
Speaker 5: he felt that there were more important matters than a
57:27
Speaker 5: journalist for the Washington Post, the more important matters being
57:30
Speaker 5: weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and various administration initiatives in
57:35
Speaker 5: the Middle East. And then subsequent to that, as it
57:38
Speaker 5: turns out, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, after Trump left office,
57:43
Speaker 5: Jared Kushner was put in charge of managing $ 2 billion
57:47
Speaker 5: worth of Saudi assets, and he gets a fee right
57:50
Speaker 5: off the top. So those are the circumstances that I
57:54
Speaker 5: confronted when I was the editor of The Washington Post.
57:57
Speaker 1: What parallels do you see to this situation, or don't
58:00
Speaker 1: you see, Marty?
58:02
Speaker 5: Well, preposterous allegations being made by a government, you would
58:06
Speaker 5: hope that our government would be better than that, not
58:09
Speaker 5: make baseless allegations like it is in this instance, in
58:13
Speaker 5: the same way that the Iranian government makes baseless allegations.
58:17
Speaker 5: So that's the parallel with regard to Jason Rezaian. I
58:20
Speaker 5: would say the parallel with regard to Jamal Khashoggi is
58:24
Speaker 5: that you have a Trump administration who, frankly, doesn't give
58:28
Speaker 5: a damn about journalists or even someone who's not a journalist,
58:31
Speaker 5: but someone who just co-authored an opinion column for a
58:35
Speaker 5: newspaper on a college campus. He simply doesn't care about
58:39
Speaker 5: free expression. And, you know, in this instance, you know,
58:43
Speaker 5: they make accusations of support for terrorism and all that
58:47
Speaker 5: sort of stuff, even though there's absolutely no evidence of
58:50
Speaker 5: any support for terrorism or a terrorist group or anything
58:54
Speaker 5: like that. And the real terror here is emanating from
58:56
Speaker 5: the administration itself. They're seeking to terrorize immigrants. They're seeking
59:01
Speaker 5: to terrorize international students on college campuses. They're seeking to
59:06
Speaker 5: terrorize journalists. And ultimately to terrorize even American citizens.
59:13
Speaker 12: So after the murder of Khashoggi, did you perceive a
59:16
Speaker 12: chilling effect within the opinion section? And if you did,
59:19
Speaker 12: how did you navigate that? Because it's something that we're
59:22
Speaker 12: you know.
59:23
Speaker 1: Facing right now? We didn't.
59:24
Speaker 5: I mean, there were various threats made by Saudi nationals
59:28
Speaker 5: against individuals, including our owner, Jeff Bezos. He actually had
59:32
Speaker 5: his company, Amazon, had plans to invest a billion dollars
59:35
Speaker 5: in Saudi Arabia, and that all came to a halt.
59:38
Speaker 5: He himself was threatened in various ways. And then there
59:42
Speaker 5: were people on the staff who received threats as well.
59:45
Speaker 5: But it did not have a chilling effect. We did
59:46
Speaker 5: our job in the news department. We covered the story independently, professionally.
59:51
Speaker 5: And in the opinion section, they waged a campaign on
59:54
Speaker 5: the opinion section, which I was not responsible for, but
59:57
Speaker 5: because there's a wall between opinion and the news department
1:00:00
Speaker 5: at a place like the Washington Post.
1:00:02
Speaker 1: But they waged a.
1:00:03
Speaker 5: Campaign to first to find what happened to Jamal Khashoggi
1:00:08
Speaker 5: because we didn't know where he was. And then when
1:00:10
Speaker 5: we learned that he had been, in fact, assassinated, he
1:00:12
Speaker 5: had been murdered, to find out who was responsible for
1:00:17
Speaker 5: that and to bring about justice. And then there was
1:00:20
Speaker 5: a campaign on the part of the newspaper itself, our publisher,
1:00:24
Speaker 5: to try to pressure the administration to do something to
1:00:27
Speaker 5: penalize the Saudis, the crown prince and the entire Saudi
1:00:30
Speaker 5: government for having murdered a journalist merely for publishing opinions
1:00:34
Speaker 5: that the Saudi government didn't like. And so that campaign
1:00:39
Speaker 5: lasted a long time. Ultimately, there really was no justice
1:00:44
Speaker 5: because the Trump administration didn't care. So there was no
1:00:47
Speaker 5: chilling effect within our newsroom or within the opinion department
1:00:50
Speaker 5: or within the paper overall.
1:00:53
Speaker 1: Marty, with the Jason Rezaian case, you know, I see
1:00:57
Speaker 1: some kind of parallel between you having to lead the
1:01:00
Speaker 1: news organization in covering what was happening to one of
1:01:05
Speaker 1: your journalists while one of your journalists was in this
1:01:07
Speaker 1: very vulnerable position. And what Argie is going through where
1:01:11
Speaker 1: someone who's written for their page is you know, is
1:01:13
Speaker 1: in a vulnerable position being held and they're having to
1:01:15
Speaker 1: cover this story as well. And I'm curious just if
1:01:18
Speaker 1: you could take us inside that experience as a leader
1:01:21
Speaker 1: of the paper at that time. Like, did you face
1:01:23
Speaker 1: pressure internally from Jason's family, from the administration to alter
1:01:29
Speaker 1: your coverage in any way to not piss off the Iranians,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: for instance, and possibly put him in danger or further danger?
1:01:36
Speaker 5: Well, you know, we just tried to cover it in
1:01:38
Speaker 5: many ways, pretty much the way we would cover any
1:01:40
Speaker 5: other story is try to find out what happened trying
1:01:42
Speaker 5: to describe what was in fact occurring, what his case
1:01:46
Speaker 5: was supposedly all about, which, of course, the Iranians wouldn't explain,
1:01:50
Speaker 5: and to see what the administration was trying to do
1:01:52
Speaker 5: in order to obtain his release.
1:01:55
Speaker 1: And so that's what we did.
1:01:58
Speaker 5: It's obviously very emotional for anybody who's having to cover this.
1:02:02
Speaker 5: But as a news department, you know, you have to
1:02:05
Speaker 5: maintain some level of, I don't know, just being distancing
1:02:10
Speaker 5: yourself a little bit from it. in order to cover it.
1:02:13
Speaker 5: And in the same way that, you know, if you're
1:02:16
Speaker 5: the police department, if you have to investigate a murder,
1:02:18
Speaker 5: you can't become emotional about it. And so, you know,
1:02:23
Speaker 5: you have to ultimately control your emotions and cover the
1:02:26
Speaker 5: story in a thorough way. And that's what we did.
1:02:31
Speaker 5: We never got pressure at all from the family. We
1:02:33
Speaker 5: worked with the family. We had constant contact. Our foreign
1:02:36
Speaker 5: editor was in constant contact with Jason's brother and with
1:02:40
Speaker 5: his mother. And so they were not opposed in any
1:02:44
Speaker 5: way to our coverage. And the feeling was the more
1:02:48
Speaker 5: attention we brought to his case, the more likely he
1:02:50
Speaker 5: was to be released.
1:02:52
Speaker 12: So we at The Daily are getting a ton of
1:02:55
Speaker 12: takedown requests for articles. So I'm wondering, do you have
1:02:58
Speaker 12: any advice for newsrooms like ours and newsrooms across the
1:03:02
Speaker 12: country who are receiving these requests and now have to
1:03:04
Speaker 12: figure out what to do when writers are afraid to
1:03:08
Speaker 12: have their work published?
1:03:10
Speaker 1: Or want to have it taken down after it is published, right?
1:03:13
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, look, I mean, it's a very difficult decision.
1:03:17
Speaker 5: It's hard to give advice in these circumstances. Obviously, there's
1:03:20
Speaker 5: a lot at stake for the people who make these
1:03:22
Speaker 5: takedown requests. The only point that I would make is
1:03:26
Speaker 5: that probably all of this is still available in the
1:03:29
Speaker 5: Internet Archive. It's probably already been archived by the administration
1:03:35
Speaker 5: and by outfits like Canary Missions. um, which have been
1:03:39
Speaker 5: identifying people they feel should be targeted for removal from
1:03:43
Speaker 5: the country for purported anti-Semitic behavior or anti-Israel behavior or
1:03:48
Speaker 5: whatever it might be. So taking it down is probably
1:03:51
Speaker 5: not going to mean that it's been removed from detection.
1:03:55
Speaker 5: So I think that's something to consider, you know, but
1:03:58
Speaker 5: it's very personal and, and, uh, I, I don't really have, um,
1:04:04
Speaker 5: individual advice, it would be worth listening to each individual
1:04:06
Speaker 5: person about what the circumstances were. I do feel that
1:04:09
Speaker 5: that is a bit of, given the administration, what it wants.
1:04:13
Speaker 5: So if we don't want these things published, and then
1:04:16
Speaker 5: the people who publish them, the people who wrote them,
1:04:18
Speaker 5: in fact, they don't publish anymore, and they take down
1:04:21
Speaker 5: what they've already published. And in a way, that's a
1:04:23
Speaker 5: victory for the administration. And I do think that all
1:04:26
Speaker 5: of us who value free expression need to stand up
1:04:29
Speaker 5: against that. That said, as I indicated, it's a very
1:04:33
Speaker 5: personal matter And, um, uh, I'm not sure I have, uh, fantastic.
1:04:38
Speaker 1: I was surprised to learn in talking to, um, the attorney, Mike,
1:04:42
Speaker 1: he stand from the, um, student press legal center that
1:04:46
Speaker 1: they actually have revised their kind of like Rob was
1:04:49
Speaker 1: talking about their standard advice. Whereas before they would be like,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: hell no, it stays up. We don't, you know, um,
1:04:55
Speaker 1: revise history in this way. They're not saying take it down,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: but when they, they issued actually kind of a, um,
1:05:01
Speaker 1: preemptive statement after getting so many calls to say, like,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: it makes sense for student newsrooms to revisit these policies
1:05:08
Speaker 1: and have a bit more of an open mind than
1:05:10
Speaker 1: we've had in the past, which I found surprising. But
1:05:13
Speaker 1: I'm curious, yeah, Kayla, like what you're hearing in your reporting,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: what are the different types of approaches you've heard of
1:05:19
Speaker 1: and which ones strike you as maybe the most compelling or,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: you know, just something we could think about right now?
1:05:25
Speaker 4: So I can share, you know, without giving identifying information,
1:05:29
Speaker 4: but we have been going through this to some extent
1:05:31
Speaker 4: at The Intercept. You know, we work with journalists in
1:05:35
Speaker 4: Palestine and of Palestinian descent. And there was one case
1:05:39
Speaker 4: where a contributing writer who we work with had gotten
1:05:43
Speaker 4: this Palestinian writer to write a piece several, I think
1:05:47
Speaker 4: several years ago, but around, you know, post-October 7th attacks
1:05:50
Speaker 4: and the war on Gaza. And And they reached out
1:05:54
Speaker 4: in the early months. I think it was sometime around
1:05:56
Speaker 4: the election, actually, before all of this stuff had started happening,
1:05:59
Speaker 4: asking because their family was in proceedings to get a
1:06:04
Speaker 4: green card, something related to that. And they were concerned
1:06:08
Speaker 4: about having their byline up on on our website. And
1:06:10
Speaker 4: there was this big back and forth, like our editor,
1:06:12
Speaker 4: I'm not an editor. So I, I luckily don't have
1:06:15
Speaker 4: this decision on my shoulders, but the editors originally were
1:06:19
Speaker 4: very adamant that they didn't want to take this down to,
1:06:21
Speaker 4: because of your point that we don't, we don't rewrite history.
1:06:24
Speaker 7: We don't erase stuff, you know.
1:06:25
Speaker 4: When it gets inconvenient, but the reporter who had connected this,
1:06:29
Speaker 4: this freelancer with us was distraught because it was the
1:06:33
Speaker 4: first time that this question had really been raised.
1:06:35
Speaker 7: Like, do we put our journalistic principles, ahead of someone's
1:06:39
Speaker 7: immediate safety when they're telling us, I'm going to be
1:06:41
Speaker 7: persecuted by the government if you don't do this.
1:06:43
Speaker 1: And it is also a journalistic principle to minimize harm.
1:06:46
Speaker 5: Exactly.
1:06:46
Speaker 1: That is one of our journalistic principles among many others.
1:06:49
Speaker 7: Thank you.
1:06:49
Speaker 11: Yes.
1:06:51
Speaker 4: And so in that case, I think, and so, I mean,
1:06:54
Speaker 4: I'm not actually sure what ended up happening with that case,
1:06:56
Speaker 4: but this is coming up again and again. I mean,
1:06:58
Speaker 4: I think to Marty's point, it really is an individual,
1:07:02
Speaker 4: like a case by case situation, which is not a
1:07:04
Speaker 4: helpful answer for somebody who's dealing with this every day.
1:07:07
Speaker 4: But I think you have to weigh the risks and
1:07:10
Speaker 4: the benefits to your paper of, I think, you know,
1:07:13
Speaker 4: the point that this stuff is already out there. It's
1:07:15
Speaker 4: like the op-ed is not going to be, you know,
1:07:18
Speaker 4: in Ramesa's case, it was the reason, you know, the
1:07:20
Speaker 4: ostensible reason that they detained her. But if they're coming
1:07:23
Speaker 4: after you, they're going to find something.
1:07:26
Speaker 7: To take you for.
1:07:27
Speaker 4: Like, it's not, if you take down the op-ed, you
1:07:29
Speaker 4: might feel like you're protecting yourself more. And I don't
1:07:31
Speaker 4: want to sound so cynical and depressing, but that is
1:07:33
Speaker 4: the reality of where we are right now. So, you know,
1:07:36
Speaker 4: it might feel like you're exerting some form of control,
1:07:39
Speaker 4: but at the end of the day, we have no control,
1:07:42
Speaker 4: which is terrifying.
1:07:42
Speaker 1: Okay. Can I ask you a question? Something I've noticed
1:07:46
Speaker 1: just like talking to you and your fellow colleagues on
1:07:49
Speaker 1: the paper, like when I've asked about, so what are
1:07:52
Speaker 1: you doing? Like, what is your policy? And now that
1:07:54
Speaker 1: you're being faced with these takedown requests, you guys have
1:07:56
Speaker 1: been a little like reluctant to talk about what it is,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: has been my sense. And when I talked to the
1:08:03
Speaker 1: exiting opinions editor at the Yale Daily News, the audio
1:08:06
Speaker 1: I played at the beginning, he told this whole story,
1:08:09
Speaker 1: as you heard, about how he's gotten four or five
1:08:11
Speaker 1: requests to take down previously published pieces. And when I said, okay,
1:08:14
Speaker 1: so what's the end of the story? Did you take
1:08:16
Speaker 1: them down? He said he didn't want to comment on it,
1:08:19
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't comment on the Yale Daily News retraction policies.
1:08:23
Speaker 1: I'm not asking you to comment on Tufts, but that
1:08:26
Speaker 1: was interesting to me. My impulse, just from where I sit,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: is If you're going to be taking stuff down and
1:08:32
Speaker 1: erasing history, at least be transparent about the policy in
1:08:35
Speaker 1: some way. That's kind of like my gut reaction. But
1:08:38
Speaker 1: how are you guys thinking about it? There must be
1:08:40
Speaker 1: considerations that I'm not appreciating that make you guys want
1:08:44
Speaker 1: to not be transparent about your thinking.
1:08:46
Speaker 3: Sure.
1:08:47
Speaker 12: Well, yeah, I mean, we get a lot of advice.
1:08:49
Speaker 12: And I think conversations like this really do help. But
1:08:55
Speaker 12: we are trying to we follow a policy, but also
1:08:57
Speaker 12: we take things on a case-by-case basis. And our policies
1:09:01
Speaker 12: are up on our website, but we're looking to minimize
1:09:04
Speaker 12: real financial, emotional, or physical harm. And something that we
1:09:09
Speaker 12: talked about was the idea that physical harm can be
1:09:13
Speaker 12: actual physical harm or political harm. you know, someone getting
1:09:15
Speaker 12: detained or deported. So we, in each of these takedown requests,
1:09:20
Speaker 12: we're looking at these details.
1:09:22
Speaker 1: Can you give a sense of how many takedown requests
1:09:24
Speaker 1: you've gotten?
1:09:27
Speaker 12: Maybe less than 10.
1:09:28
Speaker 7: Okay.
1:09:30
Speaker 11: Yeah.
1:09:30
Speaker 1: But in the last month?
1:09:31
Speaker 12: I mean, it's been a huge increase since this happened.
1:09:34
Speaker 12: So this is certainly due to the detainment of Rumeza.
1:09:38
Speaker 1: And do you have a special, have you formed like
1:09:40
Speaker 1: a special committee or something to deal with these? Do
1:09:42
Speaker 1: you have a process that you've come up with internally?
1:09:44
Speaker 1: Is there an editor who's in charge of assessing them?
1:09:47
Speaker 12: We at the Tufts Daily Leadership, we look at, we
1:09:50
Speaker 12: look at these cases and we also get, get advice
1:09:53
Speaker 12: from others.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you have it figured out? Like,
1:09:57
Speaker 1: do you feel good about the process or are you like,
1:09:59
Speaker 1: I don't know, like this feels like just grasping in
1:10:02
Speaker 1: the dark?
1:10:03
Speaker 12: I mean, I think the situation just is changing with
1:10:06
Speaker 12: every day. Um, So I would say that we're slowly
1:10:09
Speaker 12: figuring it out. It's definitely a process that we're still
1:10:13
Speaker 12: working on, but we feel good about the policies that
1:10:15
Speaker 12: we've created.
1:10:18
Speaker 1: All right, I'll leave you alone now. I'll let you
1:10:20
Speaker 1: ask your questions of these guys. But I've been curious
1:10:23
Speaker 1: about the kind of hush-hushness about these policies on campuses,
1:10:27
Speaker 1: student newspapers.
1:10:29
Speaker 9: Definitely.
1:10:29
Speaker 12: I guess one thing that I wanted to ask for
1:10:33
Speaker 12: both of you, this audience is full of tough students.
1:10:37
Speaker 12: What advice do you have for someone here, like a
1:10:40
Speaker 12: writer here, who has something to say but is now
1:10:43
Speaker 12: afraid to say it?
1:10:46
Speaker 5: Well, if you don't say it, you're giving in to
1:10:51
Speaker 5: the pressure from this administration. The right to free expression
1:10:55
Speaker 5: means absolutely nothing if it's not exercised. And so merely
1:11:02
Speaker 5: to hold back because you're scared, I understand the pressures.
1:11:06
Speaker 5: But that's something that people should think about is that
1:11:09
Speaker 5: if you don't exercise your right to free expression out
1:11:12
Speaker 5: of fear, then in practical terms, you have no right
1:11:15
Speaker 5: to free expression. You have censored yourself. And that's exactly
1:11:18
Speaker 5: what this administration wants to have happen. So I'm very
1:11:23
Speaker 5: reluctant to give them the kind of victories that they
1:11:25
Speaker 5: hope to have that suggests that we are not entitled
1:11:28
Speaker 5: to the rights that are written into the Constitution of
1:11:30
Speaker 5: the United States. And I am concerned when law firms
1:11:34
Speaker 5: yield to pressure from Donald Trump. I'm concerned when universities
1:11:38
Speaker 5: yield to pressure from Donald Trump. I've been concerned when
1:11:42
Speaker 5: some media organizations have yielded to pressure from Donald Trump
1:11:45
Speaker 5: because that merely is an invitation to apply more pressure
1:11:50
Speaker 5: because they know that pressure will work. And the greater
1:11:52
Speaker 5: the pressure, the greater the fear, the more likely that
1:11:55
Speaker 5: people will simply not express themselves or will not engage
1:11:58
Speaker 5: in political activity generally. that they feel will make themselves
1:12:02
Speaker 5: a target of this administration. That's a victory for the
1:12:05
Speaker 5: Trump administration. And I am reluctant, to say the least,
1:12:11
Speaker 5: to give the administration the kind of victories that it's
1:12:13
Speaker 5: looking for on this front.
1:12:21
Speaker 1: I'm curious, just as a follow-up, Marty, and this is
1:12:23
Speaker 1: for you, to Akela, and I'm thinking of it myself, like,
1:12:27
Speaker 1: have either of you ever felt kind of the personal
1:12:30
Speaker 1: danger that could be tied to publishing something that certain
1:12:34
Speaker 1: international students might be feeling right now? The personal jeopardy?
1:12:40
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I'm a U.S.
1:12:41
Speaker 4: Citizen, but I'm also a black woman, and I cover
1:12:48
Speaker 4: police brutality. I cover the pro-Israel lobby in Congress. I've
1:12:51
Speaker 4: had plenty of stuff thrown at me. I'm not concerned
1:12:55
Speaker 4: about being deported, obviously, because I'm a U.S. citizen, but
1:12:58
Speaker 4: I am concerned about traveling. I'm concerned about, you know,
1:13:01
Speaker 4: my mom is like today, she was like.
1:13:04
Speaker 10: Be safe.
1:13:04
Speaker 7: I'm like, I'm in Boston.
1:13:05
Speaker 4: Like, you know, like, but these are, there's concerns. And
1:13:09
Speaker 4: particularly because the intersection of the things that I cover
1:13:12
Speaker 4: have been sort of the flashpoints of the biggest social
1:13:15
Speaker 4: movements that we've seen over the last five years in
1:13:18
Speaker 4: this country.
1:13:18
Speaker 7: I certainly am concerned about it, but I.
1:13:20
Speaker 4: Also am really grateful that I work at a place
1:13:24
Speaker 4: like The Intercept where, you.
1:13:27
Speaker 7: Fearless adversarial journalism.
1:13:29
Speaker 4: But what's really behind that is knowing that I have
1:13:33
Speaker 4: support from every person on my editorial team to approach
1:13:37
Speaker 4: my reporting from the position that everyone deserves human rights
1:13:41
Speaker 4: and human dignity, and that there are political forces in
1:13:45
Speaker 4: this world that are diametrically opposed to that. And so
1:13:48
Speaker 4: covering those forces as if they operate in a And
1:13:54
Speaker 4: so I come to every story with that approach and
1:13:58
Speaker 4: I take pride in that. So I want to tell you,
1:14:01
Speaker 4: just do the right thing and you'll be fine. But
1:14:03
Speaker 4: we are all coming to this from different positionalities and
1:14:05
Speaker 4: with different levels of support. And so I think it
1:14:08
Speaker 4: really does, you know, to your initial question, like what's
1:14:11
Speaker 4: your advice for journalists or students who want to be
1:14:14
Speaker 4: writing about this stuff?
1:14:15
Speaker 7: I agree with Marty. I think do it because doing
1:14:18
Speaker 7: the opposite is caving in.
1:14:19
Speaker 4: But you also do need to be smart and like,
1:14:22
Speaker 4: if you know that you are more vulnerable than your
1:14:26
Speaker 4: friend who might be a U.S. citizen who is encouraging
1:14:28
Speaker 4: you to write about this, like reach out to the
1:14:31
Speaker 4: resources that you have on campus to the Student Press
1:14:34
Speaker 4: Law Center or to the ACLU or make sure that
1:14:36
Speaker 4: you have people.
1:14:37
Speaker 1: I know, but that's what I'm thinking about. I'm like,
1:14:38
Speaker 1: I'm an international student. I reach out to Rob to
1:14:40
Speaker 1: get some advice.
1:14:42
Speaker 7: And he says, don't write your op-ed.
1:14:42
Speaker 1: And he says, actually, as your lawyer, I can't in
1:14:45
Speaker 1: good faith say that this is the greatest idea. And
1:14:49
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to put myself in that position as someone–
1:14:52
Speaker 1: I'm not an international student.
1:14:53
Speaker 4: I think the depressing part of that point is that
1:14:55
Speaker 4: there are going to, like, sometimes the answer will be
1:14:58
Speaker 4: don't do the right thing. And, like, maybe there's another
1:15:00
Speaker 4: way for you to, you know, do your activism or
1:15:04
Speaker 4: do your speaking out about this.
1:15:05
Speaker 7: But you have to be realistic.
1:15:07
Speaker 4: About the country that we're living in right now. And
1:15:10
Speaker 4: I don't think that we as journalists or as lawyers
1:15:13
Speaker 4: can be going around and pretending like everything's fine and
1:15:16
Speaker 4: that democracy will prevail.
1:15:17
Speaker 7: Because it's not.
1:15:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, Marty, how do you think about that, the kind
1:15:20
Speaker 1: of balancing the high-minded or like the principled approach with
1:15:24
Speaker 1: the potential personal peril, I guess, that people might be weighing?
1:15:29
Speaker 5: I think anybody who's in journalism is going to face
1:15:31
Speaker 5: threats if they deal with sensitive subjects. I certainly have,
1:15:35
Speaker 5: particularly after the election of 2020. Many of the Trump
1:15:39
Speaker 5: supporters threatened me, threatened my colleagues. They received even worse
1:15:44
Speaker 5: than I did. Our security team regularly checked out those threats,
1:15:48
Speaker 5: whether they came by phone or whether they came via
1:15:52
Speaker 5: social media or emails or whatever it might be. Some
1:15:56
Speaker 5: threats were delivered to people's individual doors at their homes.
1:15:59
Speaker 5: And some of those people who issued those threats had
1:16:03
Speaker 5: criminal backgrounds, by the way, for violent crimes. So that
1:16:08
Speaker 5: was deeply concerning. And then after January 6th of 2021,
1:16:13
Speaker 5: some of the people who participated in that or organized
1:16:16
Speaker 5: that disseminated advice that said that we don't have to
1:16:20
Speaker 5: act as a group. We can act autonomously. We know
1:16:23
Speaker 5: where people live. Take action on your own. So that
1:16:27
Speaker 5: was a concerning thing as well. And I received a
1:16:30
Speaker 5: lot of threats at that point as well. Look, I
1:16:32
Speaker 5: had to keep doing my job. I can't say, well,
1:16:34
Speaker 5: I'm going to stop doing my job because these threats
1:16:37
Speaker 5: are being issued. On the other hand, you watch who's
1:16:41
Speaker 5: around you, what the movements are. You monitor things. You
1:16:45
Speaker 5: alert your security team. to potential threats, but I can't
1:16:49
Speaker 5: say I'm gonna, I think I'll just check out of
1:16:51
Speaker 5: journalism while this passes. That's not possible because we had
1:16:56
Speaker 5: a job to do and a very important job to do.
1:16:59
Speaker 5: And I think what everybody's learning at Tufts, I hope,
1:17:02
Speaker 5: is just how important journalism is. It's important that, and great,
1:17:06
Speaker 5: that Tufts Daily is covering this story so energetically and
1:17:11
Speaker 5: so professionally. We need that, we need the facts, And
1:17:14
Speaker 5: I think it's a reminder, by the way, that the
1:17:17
Speaker 5: attacks on journalists is just a precursor to attacks on
1:17:21
Speaker 5: free expression by everybody. We are the first target because
1:17:25
Speaker 5: we have institutions, we have some sort of organization. And
1:17:29
Speaker 5: so if an administration can crush us first, then they
1:17:33
Speaker 5: can go after every individual out there. And that is
1:17:35
Speaker 5: the path that has been followed by dictators throughout the
1:17:39
Speaker 5: world and over the course of history. is first they
1:17:42
Speaker 5: go after the press, then they proceed to try to
1:17:44
Speaker 5: extinguish the rights of all citizens, particularly the free expression
1:17:48
Speaker 5: rights of all citizens. And we can't allow that. We
1:17:52
Speaker 5: can't allow that to happen. So yes, it is a
1:17:55
Speaker 5: matter of principle, but people do need to be careful.
1:17:57
Speaker 5: And every person should come to his or her own
1:18:00
Speaker 5: individual decision about that. I think when you are writing
1:18:04
Speaker 5: a piece, for example, let's say if you're writing an
1:18:06
Speaker 5: opinion piece like Ramesa wrote, Look, I mean, one of
1:18:09
Speaker 5: the things that works in her favor is that she
1:18:12
Speaker 5: did not advocate violence against other people. She did not
1:18:16
Speaker 5: support a terrorist group. So those are the kinds of
1:18:19
Speaker 5: things that her lawyers can now point out in court
1:18:23
Speaker 5: that says that merely she was just arguing for a
1:18:25
Speaker 5: policy on the part of Tufts, the university, on the
1:18:28
Speaker 5: part of the U.S.
1:18:29
Speaker 2: Government.
1:18:30
Speaker 5: And whether you agree or disagree with that policy, she
1:18:33
Speaker 5: was not actually arguing for violence against other people. And
1:18:36
Speaker 5: she was not being hateful. She was not being anti-Semitic.
1:18:40
Speaker 5: So I think, you know, those are the kinds of
1:18:41
Speaker 5: things to be aware of is how do you write it?
1:18:43
Speaker 5: What do you write? What do you really think, by
1:18:46
Speaker 5: the way? And so you do need to exercise some
1:18:50
Speaker 5: care in how you go about your job and how
1:18:53
Speaker 5: you go about your work and how you go about
1:18:55
Speaker 5: expressing your opinions. But that doesn't mean that you should
1:18:58
Speaker 5: withdraw completely and not express opinions and not weigh in
1:19:01
Speaker 5: on matters of public concern.
1:19:04
Speaker 9: All right.
1:19:04
Speaker 1: Thank you. On that note, we want to draw this
1:19:06
Speaker 1: to a close just by reading some words from Rumeso Ozturk. These,
1:19:11
Speaker 1: I believe, were dictated from her to one of her
1:19:14
Speaker 1: attorneys while she has been and is currently still in detention.
1:19:19
Speaker 1: She said, I believe the world is a more beautiful
1:19:22
Speaker 1: and peaceful place when we listen to each other and
1:19:24
Speaker 1: allow different perspectives to be in the room. Writing is
1:19:28
Speaker 1: one of the most peaceful ways of addressing systemic inequality.
1:19:31
Speaker 1: Efforts to target me because of my op-ed in the
1:19:33
Speaker 1: Tufts Daily calling for the equal dignity and humanity of
1:19:37
Speaker 1: all people, will not deter me from my commitment to
1:19:40
Speaker 1: advocate for the rights of youth and children. That's from
1:19:44
Speaker 1: Ruben Soto's term.
1:19:45
Speaker 9: Thank you.
1:19:45
Speaker 1: If everyone can just stick around, I'm going to read
1:19:53
Speaker 1: the credits really quickly. This event has been a co-production
1:19:56
Speaker 1: of Question Everything and the Tufts Daily. It was produced
1:19:59
Speaker 1: by our executive producer, Robin Simeon, along with staff from
1:20:02
Speaker 1: the Tufts Daily, including Argya Talapragada, Elora Onion Day, Julia Carpe,
1:20:06
Speaker 1: and Claire Wood. A huge, huge thank you to the
1:20:09
Speaker 1: Tufts Daily. Thank you, everybody, for hosting us here today
1:20:11
Speaker 1: on campus for such an important conversation. Please read their
1:20:16
Speaker 1: paper for their excellent coverage of what's happening to students
1:20:19
Speaker 1: at universities and at Tufts at tuftsdaily.com. Additional production for
1:20:24
Speaker 1: Question Everything by our producers Sophie Casis and Zach St.
1:20:27
Speaker 2: Louis.
1:20:27
Speaker 1: Our team also includes associate producer Emily Meltair and contributing
1:20:30
Speaker 1: editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney. This episode will be
1:20:34
Speaker 1: fact-checked by Annika Robbins and sound design by Brendan Baker.
1:20:37
Speaker 1: Our music is by Matt McGinley. Audio engineering of our
1:20:39
Speaker 1: live event was by the team at ECAST Productions. Additional
1:20:43
Speaker 1: event production by Alexis Roney. Mara Davis helped with the booking.
1:20:47
Speaker 1: Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Gina Delvac, Tejalaj Amera,
1:20:50
Speaker 1: Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. Thanks for listening. Thanks, everybody,
1:20:53
Speaker 1: for being here. More next time.