From Moscow to Massachusetts: the chilling echoes of autocracy
The slippery slope: what the arrest of a Tufts student reveals about America’s drift toward censorship
On March 25, Tufts PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside her apartment in Somerville. No incriminating information has been revealed about her. We only know that she wrote an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ stance on Palestine. As a Russian immigrant, this arrest gives me flashbacks to Russia’s descent into autocracy. As a Jew who has experienced antisemitism in the past, I am confident that this is not a defense against antisemitism, but an offense against human rights.
One of the most consistent facets of modern autocratic regimes is the censorship of free speech. This is not a distant concern for me — it is a lived memory. In 2021, in Russia, four student journalists, some of them my high school friends from the prestigious Higher School of Economics in Moscow, were criminally charged and placed under house arrest for expressing their critical stance toward the Russian government in the student-run online magazine DOXA. A year later, Russia invaded Ukraine, and since then, there have been over a million casualties in the war.
Without a doubt, Öztürk’s detention vividly reminds me of the arrests of the DOXA editors. Whether you agree with Öztürk’s opinion or not, I firmly believe that she should be allowed to express her opinion just like anyone else. Her detention is an absolute disgrace to the U.S. and a violation of free speech. It sets a dangerous precedent — one that places the United States on a slippery slope toward autocracy. As someone who has witnessed firsthand the consequences of an authoritarian regime in a major military power with imperial ambitions, I find this prospect genuinely harrowing. We — all of us who do not support human rights violations — must stand up against Öztürk’s detention and further violations of free expression.
Another consistent facet of modern autocracies is the weaponization of fundamentally good and widely shared values. In Russia, the vast majority of people remember the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust with deep revulsion. The government has exploited this collective memory, framing its war against Ukraine as a fight against Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Trump is making the same political stance with antisemitism.
I have experienced antisemitism in Russia: occasional slurs were thrown at me, and I left my middle school because my Stalin-loving teacher had falsified my grades. My parents had it worse — in the USSR, they had to sneak into university past the admissions quotas that limited how many Jews could attend higher education schools, and they were physically beaten just for being Jewish. The whole of my granddad’s family, over fifteen people, were shot by Nazis. Thus, Trump’s rhetoric of protecting Jews from antisemitism appeals to many on a fundamental, emotional level. However, I do not believe that his political posing is for the protection of Jews’ safety. I find it profoundly cynical and dangerous to see Jewish suffering used to justify political repression.
Trump has repeatedly associated with and refused to disavow white supremacist figures and groups, some of which have been connected to acts of antisemitic violence. I have a hard time believing that somebody who is associated with white supremacists and Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes and Kanye West takes antisemitism seriously. I can, however, believe that Trump sees antisemitism, or rather a war against it, as a convenient tool to weaponize against his real enemies — universities and immigrants.
Trump has a documented history of attacking universities because their demographics typically do not support his politics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration attempted to expel all international students on F1-visa if they were taking classes online. This policy would have made it impossible for universities to continue their academic activities. Nowadays, he is curtailing federal research grants while casting higher education as an enemy of free thought. The detentions of Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil, and Badar Khan Suri do not aim to protect a Jewish community, but rather to attack universities and immigrants.
Universities depend on their international student body. Almost half, or 40.1%, of enrolled PhD students at MIT are international. These students enter into agreements with MIT — visa sponsorship codified in Form I-20, enrollment contracts, housing guarantees, and funding commitments. When the government forcibly violates this agreement through no misdeed of either the student or the university, this encroaches on the university’s freedom. It compromises the university’s ability to seek and attract talent overseas, as well as its ability to maintain a diverse student body. It renders previous commitments between students and universities less binding, creating insecurity for all affected groups.
All the students detained have no evidence of being involved in violent protests or harassment. There have been plenty of people who were. Why detain the ones who were not, especially if you are ostensibly trying to protect Jews?
I see an obvious explanation: if the detained students had committed any crimes, it would have been easy for innocent immigrant scholars to feel safe. In contrast, any immigrant student can associate with another immigrant student who has done nothing but express their opinion. This creates an atmosphere of fear and makes immigrants, especially international scholars and ethnic minorities, want to hide, which is what Trump desires.
Knowing that ICE — Trump’s sidekicks — are prowling just a mere block away from my house in Medford, Mass., targeting visa and green card holders from top universities, is highly disconcerting. Trump wants us, immigrants or those who associate with immigrants, to be silent. I believe we should do precisely the opposite. Because, after all, isn’t detention and deportation more frightening than the alternative of living with human rights violations? I see no reason to fight to stay in Trumpsylvania. I would rather fight to not let the U.S. turn into a dystopia and fight to save the world from another deranged superpower.
Revekka Gershovich is a predoctoral research assistant at MIT Sloan with research interests in political economy — particularly propaganda, censorship, social media, and news. She has previously worked with non-profits supporting refugees and political prisoners in Russia and Ukraine, including OVD-Info, the Center for Refugee Children, and the Global Disaster Relief Team.