Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
▻https://forward.com/news/712297/students-deported-ice-antisemitism-deborah-lipstadt
Lipstadt, a renowned Holocaust historian at Emory University who served as the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism until earlier this year, said she does not oppose the enforcement of visa rules or accountability for students who cross legal or institutional lines. But she warned that such measures must be carried out with restraint and fidelity to due process.
“We have laws. Apply those laws,” she said. “And if someone broke the laws, if someone lied on their visa, if someone broke a university rule that should have gotten them expelled or was expelled, then apply the rules. We’re a nation of rules.”
Her remarks place her in a carefully calibrated position — neither in full alignment with critics of the Trump administration’s policy, nor with those who have championed mass deportations as a show of zero tolerance. “I’m not opposed to the administration rescinding the student visas of some of the people that they’re rescinding the student visas of,” she said. “But I just think it should be done properly, according to the laws of the country.”