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BOSTON — As Harvard’s two lawsuits against the Trump administration wind their way through federal court, a separate lawsuit involving a group of its faculty reached trial when lawyers delivered opening arguments before a federal judge on Monday.
The lawsuit by the American Association of University Professors — filed jointly by the organization’s national office, its chapters at Harvard, New York University, and Rutgers University, and the Middle East Studies Association in late March — has emerged as a litmus test of the Trump administration’s authority to deport international students for their political speech.
Lawyers for the AAUP called two witnesses and laid out their case during opening arguments, accusing the administration of violating the First Amendment by instituting an “ideological deportation policy.” The policy, they said, involves attempting to deport noncitizen faculty and students for their participation in pro-Palestine activism.
But government lawyers argued in court that no such policy exists, saying that immigration officers were merely enforcing existing law related to national security when they attempted to deport students and faculty. They also suggested that the AAUP’s witnesses — many of whom are professors — work in the “realm of concepts” and were operating on “conjecture” when they said the ideological deportation policy exists.
“You’ll find that they are intelligent, because they are,” Victoria M. Santora said. “But the law requires that their case be grounded in fact. The law requires it be grounded in reality. It is not.”
Still, the AAUP pointed to actions taken by the Trump administration that they said prove the existence of the ideological deportation policy. The organization’s lawyers said that the Department of Homeland Security established a “tiger team” of designated senior officials to identify noncitizen student protestors, and that the State Department and DHS had established an inter-agency process to deport students identified by the team.
The AAUP’s lawyers also cited multiple social media posts from top Trump administration officials, including Trump himself, that indicate the policy’s existence. They noted a post on X from Secretary of State Marco Rubio — made shortly after the highly publicized detention of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in March for his involvement in pro-Palestine activism — that threatened to revoke the visas of “Hamas supporters” to deport them.
The AAUP sued the Trump administration before it singled out Harvard in its campaign against universities. But the case enters trial months into a targeted onslaught by the administration, which attempted to end Harvard’s enrollment of international students and block them from entering the country — before a federal judge paused the effort with a preliminary injunction.
During the trial, government lawyers appeared to waver on whether the First Amendment applies to noncitizens who are legally in the country. Santora, who delivered the government’s opening remarks, initially said that noncitizens would enjoy the same constitutional protections as citizens. But she later seemed to walk back her comments, saying that there were “nuances” to noncitizens’ constitutionally protected rights.
William G. Young ’62, the federal judge overseeing the case, said he “wasn’t so taken” by the government’s argument about whether the First Amendment applies to noncitizens. Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer representing the AAUP, said there was “no question” that noncitizens enjoy constitutional rights in a press conference held outside of the courthouse after the trial.
“It’s true that the government tried to walk that back, saying that things were more nuanced, but it didn’t explain how things were more nuanced,” Krishnan said.
During the trial, the plaintiffs brought two professors to testify about how the ideological deportation policy had impacted their political speech. Megan Hyska, a Northwestern University Philosophy professor and Canadian citizen, said she canceled the publication of an op-ed that was critical of the Trump administration after seeing the arrest of Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who had written a pro-Palestine op-ed in the campus paper. Hyska described feeling “frightened and disturbed” by the arrests and said she feared that any criticism of Trump could similarly jeopardize her immigration status as a green card holder.
“I felt extremely shocked and distressed, in the first place for Mr. Khalil and his family, but frankly also for myself,” Hyska said.
Hyska said she also decided to step away from “high profile” public activism, including by passing over leadership positions with the Democratic Socialists of America, a socialist political organization that Hyska had been actively involved in before Khalil’s arrest in March. Hyska added that, though she had hoped to apply for tenure at Northwestern next year, she is now seeking employment outside of the United States.
William Kanellis, a lawyer for the government, pressed Hyska during cross-examination on where she had specifically heard about the ideological deportation policy and whether she had stepped away from political speech to the extent she testified.
Kanellis pointed to two letters urging Northwestern’s governing board to take actions related to the Trump administration — both of which Hyska signed — as evidence that she was still freely expressing her political beliefs. But Hyska responded that her speech was still chilled because she did not think those letters were intended to be public.
Nadje Al-Ali, a German citizen and professor at Brown University, also testified at the trial on Monday. Al-Ali said she had canceled a planned fellowship in Beirut because she worried that she would not be allowed to reenter the U.S.
Hyska and Al-Ali are the first of nearly two dozen witnesses to be called over the next two weeks. The 23-name list includes federal officials, academics, and professors — several of whom are not U.S. citizens.
Though Young previously declined to allow witnesses to testify anonymously, he has barred the federal government from any retaliatory action against the witnesses.
“I’ve experienced considerable trepidation about participating in this case because it involves very public political speech,” Hyska said, attributing her decision to testify in part to the protections Young granted.
As the first day of the trial wrapped up inside the John J. Moakley Courthouse in Boston’s seaport, roughly 75 AAUP affiliates rallied outside the courthouse to voice their support for the organization’s lawsuit and decry Trump’s presidency as “authoritarian.” The attendees included several Harvard professors, including Classics professor Richard F. Thomas and History professor Kirsten A. Weld, the president of Harvard’s AAUP chapter.
Caroline Light, a senior lecturer in the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, spoke at the event. She discussed her family background as a Jewish person and blasted the Trump administration’s “relentless assault on freedom of expression.”
“To the spurious claim that ideological deportation protects Jewish people, I’ll say it today, and I’ll say it until I have no voice left: not in my name,” Light said.
The AAUP’s lawsuit goes to trial after months of legal back-and-forth with the government’s lawyers. The two parties have sparred over procedural disputes, including whether witnesses would be granted protection against retaliation and what evidence can be admitted for the trial.
The suit has already survived an attempt to dismiss the case. Lawyers for the federal government pushed in late April for Young to dismiss the lawsuit because the ideological deportation policy is not formalized in writing. But Young allowed most of the case to proceed intact.
The original lawsuit argued that the Trump administration’s actions violated the First Amendment, which protects the right to receive information regardless of the source. It also included claims under the Fifth Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the actions of federal agencies. The AAUP contended that the government violated the APA by instituting an arbitrary and capricious policy.
In April, Young allowed the AAUP’s First Amendment and APA claims to move forward, but he dismissed the Fifth Amendment claim since such arguments typically only apply to written policies.
The case will run for the next eight weekdays. The next hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.
