Opinion Indian citizen detained in the US: Under Trump, America is no longer an empire of liberty

Free speech is defined loosely in India, as in other Commonwealth countries where libel laws exist. In the US, the First Amendment enshrines what the political theorist Teresa Bejan calls “mere civility” to tolerate views with which one disagrees. In Bejan’s reading, free speech is a double-edged sword. If pro-Israel students and faculty must legally tolerate anti-Israel sentiments, even those questioning Israel’s existence, critics of Israel and its relationship with the US must, in turn, accept the presence of Zionist voices on campus.

While the Biden administration refrained from arrests or deportations, the Trump administration has made its support for Netanyahu’s Israel unequivocal. This marks a clear departure from earlier US positions on Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution. A wave of arrests, visa cancellations, and attempted deportations have begun nationwide.

US statutes include emergency provisions, rarely invoked in peacetime, that allow the removal of resident aliens with “hostile” political views. The First Amendment may protect free speech for citizens and non-citizens alike, but in case of rejected visas, US immigration authorities do not need to give a reason for revoking visas. International students are routinely told so at different orientation sessions. Universities are also not obligated to offer legal aid in cases of non-compliance, though they may, as with Georgetown, offer words of solace. Even when deportations are overturned by courts, non-citizens may be detained or face multiple charges that may take months, if not years, to resolve.

At the heart of the current impasse is the role of universities in American society. Over the past century, as the historian Odd Arne Westad has argued, Pax Americana aspired to be an “empire of liberty.” This is why American liberalism held sway on campuses. But in our digital age, morally charged “extreme speech,” a concept developed by the media theorist Sahana Udupa, erodes hopes for bipartisan consensus. On social media, it has become the norm for each side to adopt maximalist positions, seeking to annihilate the other and claiming exclusive access to transcendental truths.

Offline, nuance is possible: Criticising Israel’s repeated violations of international law is not antisemitic, nor does it imply support for Hamas’s actions before, on, or after October 7, 2023. The suffering inflicted by Israeli forces on ordinary Palestinians is of Biblical proportions, but the abduction of unarmed civilians, teens and octogenarians alike, is no cause for celebration. In fact, the Palestinian historian Yezid Sayigh has argued that October 7 has harmed the cause of Palestinian freedom and called for reimagining this long-standing political struggle.

At the same time, if Jewish or other students opposed to October 7 are afraid to enter the classrooms of certain professors or departments, it is hard to see how such a campus climate can be justified. On Georgetown’s Qatar campus, for instance, a Pakistani student was suspended in October 2022 after making intemperate pro-Israel statements. Far from a culture of “academic freedom and open inquiry,” we have arrived now at the limits of liberal civility and tolerance.

In much of the Global South, from China to Brazil, Hamas is not deemed a terrorist organisation. Arguably, more capacious notions of tolerance may exist beyond what is conceivable by American liberals. Yet even among America’s geopolitical rivals, including Iran, none has openly endorsed October 7. This is not inconsistent with BRICS condemning Israel’s war crimes and repeatedly calling for a ceasefire.

Under Trump, the US is no longer an empire of liberty. It is the world’s most powerful and wealthy nation-state, aiming to outgun others in geo-economics as in geopolitics. For non-Americans, the message is clear: We cannot rely on liberal tolerance any longer, let alone make claims on it as in the age of empires. Democracy without liberalism is increasingly the norm worldwide.

In the words of J D Vance, international students at US universities are “not just bad for national security”, but also “bad for the American dream, for American kids who want to go to a nice university but can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student.” Under these circumstances, non-American students and faculty would do well to look beyond US  universities and steer clear of the ongoing culture wars between liberal elites and angry democratic publics. The liberal philosopher John Locke once wrote, somewhat glibly, that “all the world was America.” Today, beyond platitudes about free speech, we might offer a rejoinder: The rest of the world is not — and will not be — America.

 The writer teaches at Georgetown university, Qatar