As of August 2025, Stanford University’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging its campaign of censorship and retaliation against student journalists, particularly noncitizens, who share their truth. In Stanford Daily Publishing Corp. et al. v. Rubio et al. the plaintiff accused Secretary Marco Rubio and the administration of abusing two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act to censor lawfully-present noncitizens in the United States. Represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Daily’s case underscores a broader, more disturbing reality: for student journalists, the cost of free expression may now include surveillance, detention and deportation. 

Since the spring, over 6,000 student visas have been revoked with vague justifications by the state department of “assault, driving under the influence (DUI), burglary and ‘support for terrorism.’” These statistics are not abstractions — they represent real people whose lives have been upended by gross injustice. Rümeysa Öztürk, a fifth-year doctoral student at Tufts University and a Turkish citizen, should never have been detained for co-writing an “opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands,” as The New York Times reported. The Department of Homeland Security detained Öztürk in Louisiana for six weeks after masked Immigration and Customs Enforcements agents arrested her in March. Öztürk has since been released but still faces deportation. 

On Oct. 15, 2025, college papers across the country signed an amicus brief in support of the Daily. Since The Justice Editorial Board was not able to convene prior to the Daily’s deadline for signees, we are writing this editorial in support of the lawsuit and in full condemnation of the policies that have made it necessary. This board recognizes that silence is complicity. For our writers, readers and those across the nation, we stand with everyone who has felt the hand of censorship creeping into their newsroom.

The Justice Editorial Board recognizes that our own institution has not consistently offered a safe forum for all students, staff and faculty to exercise their rights. But our past must not dictate future commitments. Dissenting opinions and debate are integral to academic institutions and, more critically, the health of democracies. Maintaining the integrity of student journalism cultivates an informed community. It holds the actions and policies of our academic institutions accountable. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression placed Brandeis 149th of 257 U.S. colleges and universities, giving the University a “yellow light” designation, according to The Justice’s Sept. 30 article. FIRE’s Chief Researcher, Sean Stevens, explained that “yellow light” policies mean they are “worded in a way that they could be applied unconstitutionally. It’s vague or arbitrary wording.”

 In affirming our support for student journalists across the nation, this editorial board is calling on our own university to look inward and confront its role in upholding and undermining free expression on our campus. This is not only a call for solidarity, but one for accountability. We urge the University to stand with the board, with The Stanford Daily, to stand against the encroachment of intellectual authoritarianism in the press and academic institutions. As an institution founded upon the principle of truth, even unto its innermost parts, Brandeis must affirm its commitment to protecting all voices that challenge, question and express the truth. What is happening now is not a hypothetical or a distant event. It is immediate. It is a student sitting in an immigration detention facility for writing an op-ed. It is a newsroom censoring a story out of fear that publishing might risk someone’s visa. It is a generation of truth-tellers being taught, not by professors, but by the government, that their voice could cost them everything. 

So, as this editorial board voices our support for The Stanford Daily and all those targeted for speaking out, we issue a call to universities and citizens nationwide: protect your students and your peers. Safeguard dissent. Refuse to be complicit. Because if truth is silenced in one newsroom, it is eroded in all of them.