The White House recently released an article entitled 365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity. In examining the endless catalog of 365 apparent successes of the Trump administration, one comes across repeated points on how the White House appears to be influencing universities across the United States:​

• Point 17: “Revoked visas tied to pro-Hamas agitators on college campuses, restoring safety, free speech, and American values to universities across the nation.”
• Point 22: Cut the number of new foreign students in the U.S. by 17%.
• Point 251: Revoked waivers that allowed certain colleges to divert federal funds intended for low-income students and students with disabilities to illegal immigrants.
• Point 255: Held higher education institutions accountable for their discriminatory ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies and for allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on their campuses, driving settlements with some universities like; Northwestern University, Cornell University, the University of Virginia, Brown University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

During his second term, Trump has sought to reshape higher education according to his doctrine, and universities that fail to meet his demands will face consequences, including massive defunding and withdrawal of federal grants. On the other hand, universities that appease Trump’s efforts will receive preferential treatment and a leg up on research funding. 

In April of last year, Trump froze almost 800 million in federal funding as part of a wider investigation from the Department of Education into 60 universities “for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students on campus.” Recently, Northwestern University capitulated to the Trump Administration by agreeing to a $75-million payout in exchange for access to the previously frozen federal research funding. Naturally, these concessions from university administrations have affected students in the worst way. According to Northwestern professor Heidi Kitrosser, a constitutional law expert, this raises “troubling free speech concerns” given that “Northwestern clearly made the deal at the barrel of a gun.” 

Many Northwestern students rejected the deal on the basis that it undermined political speech. P.H.D candidate Laura Jaliff asserted that “anyone who’s read the deal can see that Northwestern is entering a new formalized stage of surveillance.” The deal will significantly restrict student activism as it explicates the prohibition of “on-campus displays, including flyers, banners, chalking, and 3-D installations outside of areas specifically designated by Northwestern.” In a sign of the administration’s contempt towards the encampments that protested against the ongoing violence perpetrated against the Palestinian civilian population, pitching tents has now been specifically outlawed.

Students on U.S. campuses have had their First Amendment targeted either indirectly through the leveraging of defunding threats or directly through deportations and unlawful detentions. For example, last year Tufts’s Rumeysa Ozturk was hauled off the street in Somerville, Massachusetts by masked ICE officers for simply coauthoring an article that called out her university for its inability to divest from Israeli companies and acknowledge the genocide in Palestine. To be clear, this is a human rights crisis where, as of June 2025, “women and children make up more than half of the 55,000” who have died since October 7th, 2023.

It is important to place Trump’s policies in a larger timeline of attacks against student free speech. From Vietnam to Palestine, and the current protests against ICE, student activism has historically increased during times of glaring violence against civilian populations. This article provides a brief legal history of Supreme Court rulings on student free speech during the 1960s and 1970s, when anti-war protests mobilized students across the country. This helps contextualize current first amendment violations so students can understand how the government has historically contorted academic environments according to their agenda or policy approach. More importantly, students can inform themselves on legal frameworks that protect them from punitive government policies.

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District

The 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case ushered the principle of student free speech into the sphere of public consciousness. In December 1965, John Tinker (age 15), Christopher Eckhart (Age 16), and Mary Bell Tinker (Age 13) organized a protest against the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to their respective schools. That year marked a turning point in the war’s escalation with the United States inflicting mass atrocities on Vietnamese civilians through aerial bombardment—730,000 were forced to flee into refugee camps. Moreover, the number of American troops deployed in Vietnam rose from 23,000 in January 1965 to 180,000 in December of that same year.

Prior to the student demonstration, school officials learned of the protests and quickly instituted a policy that would suspend anyone wearing the armbands in school, citing fear of disrupting the academic environment and inciting counterprotests. The students ignored this attempt to silence the demonstrations, which led to the suspension of the young protestors. A lawsuit was filed against the school district under the assertion that students’ First Amendment rights had been violated. Eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court and was ruled 7-2 in favor of the students. Judge Abe Fortas, who gave the majority decision, explained that students do not lose their First Amendment right at the schoolhouse gate, that the state could not prohibit speech in public schools simply because it does not align with government ideology, and that schools needed to be a place where civic discourse was encouraged. 

Justin R. Driver, Professor at Yale Law School, explains in his book, The School House Gate, that Tinker “reconceptualized the role of both the student and the school in American Society,” and that knowledge should not only be produced by teachers but also cultivated by the student body.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the student protestors, the sentiment that students should be afforded first amendment rights was not ubiquitous. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s public dissent displayed a deep displeasure towards the ruling and insisted that “taxpayers send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.”  Moreover, the Chicago Tribune criticized the decision by saying that it would undermine public schools’ ability to maintain discipline. A Gallup Poll taken in February 1969 noted that the lack of discipline was the primary problem facing American schools. Driver notes that public sentiment was rooted in the political climate and the general antagonism towards anti-war protestors, exemplified through President Nixon’s presidential campaign based on law and order.  

While this case covered the first amendment rights of students in public schools, not universities, it was one of the first instances where the highest court in the United States grappled with the issue of student free speech. More importantly, a precedent was created where academic environments, despite being subsidized or under the jurisdiction of the government, were established as spaces for young people to exchange ideas and political opinions. However, Tinker also elucidated that there have always been American citizens and policymakers who believe that students’ sole purpose is to learn, not to express themselves freely.

University Students Protesting the Vietnam War

From the mid-1960s up until the withdrawal of American troops in March 1973, student protests against the Vietnam War engulfed universities across the U.S.Tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff were protesting the killing of two million civilians, crimes against humanity including the use of Agent Orange and the targeting of women, children, and elderly in Vietnam.

May 2nd, 1964, marked the day of the first major nationwide student demonstration against the Vietnam War. More than 1000 students from Columbia University, New York University, City College, and Haverford College called for the withdrawal of U.S. military aid and troops from Vietnam. Students also marched in San Francisco, Boston, Madison, Wisconsin, and Seattle.

​In March 1965, faculty and students staged the first ever “teach-in” at the University of Michigan. It was initiated by a letter labelled “Appeal to Our Students.” The letter, signed by 58 U of M professors, detailed that students were invited on “March 24-25  to seminars, lectures, informal discussions, and a protest rally to focus attention on this war, its consequences, and ways to stop it.” 

The teach-in prompted fierce criticism from university administration and state government policymakers. Governor George Romney wrote in a letter to Arnold Kaufman, a professor of Philosophy, explains that the teach-in invites “anarchy in saying that (Kaufman), or any other person or group, (had) the right to decide when an issue is important enough to halt the regular activity of a public institution”. Despite external pressures against their constitutional rights, the teach-in proceeded as planned.

Potentially, the most notorious student protest of the 20th century was the Kent State University incident, which took place on May 4th, 1970. The protest began peacefully until tensions escalated between demonstrators and local police, leading Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes to send in the National Guard. By noon on May 4th, 3,000 demonstrators had gathered on campus. When General Robert Canterbury ordered the protestors to disperse, the protestors grew angry and began throwing rocks, prompting the General to instruct his men to load their weapons. According to the University, “between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13-second period,” leaving four dead and nine wounded. The Kent State massacre, as it came to be known in U.S. history, was felt by students throughout the nation. For example, all universities in the Boston area voted to strike, and the day after the catastrophe, 25,000 gathered at the state house to demonstrate at a rally organized by the Student Mobilization Committee.

The antiwar demonstrations that took place over the course of the 1960s and 1970s required intervention from the federal courts. Healy v. James (1972) determined that students attending public universities are still protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. The case was associated with a Central Connecticut State College student group, Students for a Democratic Society, who, because of their association with violence on other university campuses, were blocked from forming a campus chapter. Dr. F. Donald James, the University President, explained that the group’s tenets were “antithetical to the school’s policies.”  Catherine Healy,  who was a student at the college, appealed the decision, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruling was partially based on the precedent established by Tinker. 

“At the outset, we note that state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment,” Justice Lewis Powell delivered the opinion of the Court and explained that Judge Fortas established in Tinker that the need to institute order does not override freedom of speech protections on college campuses. Justice William Douglas’s opinion also made clear that those who believed that the anti-war and anti-racism movement threatened American values ignore the notion that the U.S. is inherently revolutionary. “We face a vibrant, far-reaching reassertion of what this country claims, what it has always claimed it is.”

Similarly, Hess v. Indiana (1973)saw the U.S. Supreme Court reverse an Indiana Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of the conviction of undergraduate student Gregory Hess, who was arrested on Indiana University Bloomington’s campus in May 1970 during an anti-war protest. The Indiana courts determined that while the police were dispersing the crowd, Hess yelled “we’ll take the F%!@ street later,” which violated state laws regarding disorderly conduct. The basis of his conviction was that Hess intended to incite further violence, but the Supreme Court overruled the Indiana court as there “was no evidence that they were intended and likely to produce imminent disorder” and that his First Amendment rights were violated.

While the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Tinker, Healy, and Hess, these cases illustrated that attempts to quell free speech were evident at both the state and federal levels, and that college students have a long-standing history in the legal fight for First Amendment rights. 

Ultimately, students have faced backlash when their principles, whether or not they are moral and rooted in nonviolence, clash with those in power.

Student Movement Against Vietnam Contextualizes Recent First Amendment Attacks

​In the Spring of 2024, over 3,000 students in the U.S. were arrested for protesting human rights violations in Gaza. At Northeastern University,  I saw 29 students and 6 faculty members arrested, many of whom I knew. Trump has not attempted to hide the punitive nature of his policy; the fact sheet for his executive order on “combating anti-semitism in the United States” states:

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights at Bard University, Roger Berkowitz explains that “with the retreat and cowardice of Congress in the United States, the judiciary is the only branch of the federal government standing between the President and his wished-for dictatorial power.” This has proved to be somewhat true as court rulings have recently gone in favor of students exercising free speech.

According to the ACLU, last December, a federal district court “issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk’s SEVIS student record, which was unlawfully terminated in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” This allows Öztürk to continue employment and research opportunities, which are necessary for the completion of her studies. Her immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbaba, stated that she hopes for a future where immigration courts are fair, and federal government overreach does not upend First Amendment rights.  

Unfortunately, the current Trump administration is dead set on silencing voices across American college campuses. In early February, U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter appealed the ruling that reinstated Öztürk’s SEVIS student record. For the ruling to be reversed, the government would have to prove that reinstating Öztürk’s SEVIS record would cause irreparable harm. Meanwhile, Sauter has previously claimed that the record’s termination did not violate any legal statute. This is despite the fact that Öztürk was deported and had her SEVIS record terminated for only co-authoring an article that was based on thousands of Palestinian civilians who have died from the Israeli onslaught—which have led even Israeli academics like Amos Goldberg to state plainly that “what is happening in Gaza is a genocide”.

Similar to the government reactions against Vietnam protests, the Trump administration will maintain a rigid stance against those who reject his agenda and critique his policies. Students who deem the arbitrary detention of their peers morally unjust will continue to face consequences that undermine their rights. Still, students are taught in university to engage in discourse and critical thought. The government is meant to protect students in this endeavor as it is their constitutional right. Justice Fortas explained this in Tinker, “The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.“

Students are entering another battle against the government as campuses across the country have risen up against violence perpetrated by ICE. In 2026 alone, eight people have either been killed by federal agents or have died in ICE custody. Since being elected, the Trump administration has deported more than 600,000 people. Students who reject these policies are being arrested and deported without due process for simply exercising their constitutional right. Most recently, a dozen Columbia University faculty and students were arrested for protesting Trump’s immigration policies. 

However, these attacks should not be viewed in a vacuum as for decades students have confronted those in power by upholding their moral and civic duty to speak up against violence and human rights violations. Mary Beth Tinker, in reflecting on how her protests against the Vietnam War helps contextualize the recent protests against human rights violations in Palestine, explained that “students need freedom of speech in order to advocate for their interests and discuss the issues of their lives.”  Amidst this deportation surge, students still hope that the federal courts will protect them from the Trump administration’s attacks against their freedom of speech. In spite of this, it is important that young people continue to participate in dissent to ensure that the current abuse of power does not go unchecked.