On Tuesday, Brown Corporation member Xochitl Gonzalez ’99 published an article in The Atlantic defending students’ right to protest. She argued that students receiving green cards or visas have the right to speak freely and become social activists without threat of revocation.
Gonzalez, who is currently a staff writer at The Atlantic, has been a Brown Corporation trustee since 2022.
Her article comes in light of the recent detentions of international students such as recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk. Khalil was a lead negotiator during Columbia’s 2024 pro-Palestine protests, and Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed for the Tufts Daily last year about divestment efforts on campus.
In her article, Gonzalez detailed her experience being confronted and yelled at by Brown student protestors after the Corporation voted not to divest from companies with military ties to Israel.
At the October Corporation meeting, around 150 activists protested the Corporation’s decision, which was announced earlier that month. After the meeting’s conclusion, activists confronted Corporation members as they left the Warren Alpert Medical School and temporarily blocked a bus containing Corporation members from crossing an intersection.
A few days after the meeting, Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 sent a campus-wide email describing some of the students’ behavior at the protest as “deeply concerning” and “entirely unacceptable,” citing that protestors allegedly banged on a vehicle, screamed “profanities at individuals” and used a “racial epithet directed toward a person of color.”
Gonzalez wrote that while some of her colleagues felt “rattled” by the experience, she thought that “these were students in America doing what students in America should do: questioning authority (in this case, me) and using their rights to free speech and free assembly to engage with issues they are passionate about.”
“I never for a moment felt that these students were a threat to me, let alone to America’s national security,” she added, explaining that these alleged threats to national security are the government’s justification for revoking the visas and green cards of international students who have participated in pro-Palestine activism.
Gonzalez criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent use of a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows him to revoke green cards and visas. She notes that people have been “snatched from their home or the sidewalks outside” or not allowed to reenter the country, specifically referencing Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh.
Despite holding a valid H-1B visa, Alawieh was deported last month after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol found “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leadership on her phone, according to the Department of Justice.
A spokesperson from the State Department did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment.
Gonzalez also argued that the right to protest shouldn’t depend on citizenship status.
“Green cards may be a privilege, but once they reach American soil, these students also have rights — to speak freely, to peacefully convene, to enjoy due process under the law,” she wrote.
Gonzalez continued that “criticism — even at its most odious — does not imperil a nation any more than being yelled at by students imperiled me.”
Cate Latimer is a university news editor covering faculty, University Hall and higher education. She is from Portland, OR, and studies English and Urban Studies. In her free time, you can find her playing ultimate frisbee or rewatching episodes of Parks and Rec.
