There is a moment when every democracy is tested, when the people must decide whether the rights they’ve taken for granted — the right to speak, to protest, to learn freely — are worth defending. That moment is now; not in some imagined future, not if Trump wins again, not if things get worse. Now.
Appeasement is the choice we make when we believe we can stay safe by staying quiet. That if we give in just a little, turn down the volume of our protests, cooperate with the demands of power and stay neutral in the face of oppression, we’ll be spared. But history tells us a brutal truth: appeasement doesn’t buy peace. It buys time. Time for authoritarian forces to grow stronger, more organized and more violent.
Every time a university complies with federal overreach, every time an administrator chooses silence over resistance, we are not avoiding conflict; we are delaying the inevitable and deepening its consequences. Cases of students like Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts or Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia are not isolated. They are the beginning of a pattern.
Ozturk, a doctoral student, was taken by ICE while walking to dinner in Somerville, Mass. No charges. No process. Just disappeared. Khalil, a graduate student and Palestinian activist, was pulled from his dorm by federal agents in a scene that should horrify anyone who believes in academic freedom or civil liberties. These students weren’t accused of violence. They were targeted for their voices, for opposing genocide, for supporting Palestine, for refusing to stay silent.
This crisis has now reached UMass. In a late Friday message, Chancellor Javier Reyes revealed that five international students had their visas revoked and student statuses terminated by the federal government without any prior notice.
These cases, unlike the politically motivated detentions of Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, stem from minor issues like off-campus traffic violations, yet still resulted in the loss of legal status. The University only discovered the terminations through manual checks of the SEVIS immigration database.
While the federal government operates with silence and cruelty, UMass has responded quickly and is doing its best to support affected students. Legal and housing assistance has been made available, the Angel Fund has been activated and the administration is working with the Massachusetts Attorney General. This is what responsible institutional leadership looks like.
But we should not be asking our university to stand alone. The silence from our elected officials is unacceptable. If our own members of Congress will not act to protect students from unjust visa terminations, then what are they doing? If they cannot raise their voices now, in the face of escalating federal overreach, when will they?
We need them to intervene, to demand oversight and to push back against a system that is punishing people without warning or justification. UMass is doing what it can. Now it is time for our senators and representatives to do the same.
What have universities done? Columbia capitulated, accepting a deal with the Trump administration to reinstate its federal funding. In return, it agreed to clamp down on protests, allow more police presence and open its academic departments to federal review. This is not protecting students. This is sacrificing them.
This is the logic of Neville Chamberlain in 1938, who believed that giving Hitler a piece of Czechoslovakia would satisfy his ambitions. It didn’t. It only proved to the Nazis that the world was too scared to resist.
We are being tested in the exact same way. Trump is not just a political figure, he is a totalitarian leader in the making. He has promised mass deportations. He has threatened to purge the federal government of ideological opposition. He has called for the prosecution of political enemies and is actively using federal agencies to intimidate students and faculty. This is not rhetoric, it is reality. It is being allowed to spread because too many institutions believe that if they stay neutral, they won’t be targeted.
Let me be absolutely clear: no one is safe under authoritarianism, not even the obedient. The longer we appease, the more we lose. The more we accommodate fear, the faster it becomes policy. There is no middle ground when the government is arresting students for their speech. There is no neutral stance when ICE is detaining people without charges. There is no compromise to be made with a regime that seeks total control.
Massachusetts has long imagined itself as a bastion of progressive values. But even here, we are not safe. Ozturk’s arrest happened in a sanctuary city. Khalil’s arrest happened in the heart of an Ivy League campus. Geography will not protect us. Good intentions will not protect us. Only action will.
UMass Amherst cannot afford to wait for another student to be targeted before taking a stronger public stance. While the administration has taken meaningful steps to support students affected by recent federal immigration actions, the University must do more. It should publicly refuse cooperation with ICE, reject the use of surveillance or heightened policing in response to student protests and make clear that political intimidation will never dictate campus policy.
UMass should be a leader in defending academic freedom and in protecting students who are most vulnerable to state repression. This is a moment that requires more than quiet reassurance. It requires visible, unapologetic action. The administration must set policy and take a stand, and the campus community must be ready to speak out, organize and show up for those who are being silenced. We must speak louder than we’ve ever spoken, because the people being silenced cannot speak for themselves. History is watching us, and it will not care that we were scared or that we were tired. It will only care whether we stood up or stayed silent.
Jacob Nevins can be emailed at [email protected].
