Willamette leaders working to protect international students amid federal threats

Willamette University is more insulated from Trump administration efforts to pull research funding from American universities, but is concerned about its academic freedom and the status of international students, according to a recent panel of decision makers.

Faculty members and administration officials from Willamette University answered questions about how President Donald Trump’s withholding of federal funding, student visa revocations and other efforts targeting higher education may impact the university at an event on Thursday, April 24. About 40 people attended the talk.

The speakers included a history professor, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and an assistant provost who chairs the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee. 

They expressed fears that universities nationwide are having to make changes to their recruitment, curricula and DEI policies to continue receiving federal funding. They also said the university is working to prevent future impacts such as student visa revocations or threats to its academic freedom, but Willamette is in a better position than other institutions to operate with relative independence. 

“They’re going after the media, they’re going after law firms, after universities… We’re just one of the many institutions after which they are going,” said Seth Cotlar, a professor of American history who specializes in far-right movements. 

Federal funding 

Last week, the Trump administration canceled over 400 grants from the National Science Foundation, which funds most scientific research at U.S. universities. Willamette currently has a small number of active research grants but their cancellation would not impact the daily operations of the university, said Ruth Feingold, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. 

Trump has cut federal funding to some universities as leverage to prioritize “viewpoint diversity” and modify their admissions, hiring and curricula. Among them is Columbia University, which has made changes to its curriculum and Middle Eastern Studies department to restore $400 million in halted federal funding. Harvard University, also hit with funding halts, has rejected the demands and sued the administration.

Universities losing federal funding “would be a massive transformation of the landscape of higher ed,” Cotlar said. 

Willamette does not rely on federal funding as much as other universities, like Oregon State University or the University of Oregon, since it is not primarily a research institution, said university President Steve Thorsett, who was not part of the panel but chimed in from the audience.

“What we worry a lot about is our students and the support they get from the federal government,” Thorsett said, citing multiple federal financial aid programs like Pell Grants and work study. 

About one quarter of students at Willamette receive federal financial aid, and the federal government funded around $5 million in grants and scholarships for Willamette students in the 2023-24 school year, a university official told Willamette’s student-run newspaper in March.  

Undocumented and international students

The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of visas nationwide for students who participated in pro-Palestine protests, but restored some last week after being sued over 100 times by students. In early April, dozens of students from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University had their visas revoked, but they were recently restored after the Justice Department reversed its decision. 

Willamette was among the universities where students participated in pro-Palestine protests and peacefully occupied a building, but no undocumented students or visa holders at Willamette have been directly targeted by the government, Feingold said. 

“If people are fearful of something as simple as signing a petition, showing up to a protest or saying what they believe on social media … and they lose the right to be in this country and pursue an education, that has a chilling effect on all of us,” she said.

Foreseeing challenges from the federal government, the university created a working group in November 2024 to brainstorm how the university could respond if international students were targeted, and Solano participated in the group. It decided to incorporate useful information for undocumented immigrants to the university website, including a FAQ page on what to do if immigration enforcement is on campus. 

There is increasing fear on campus among students who may be targeted by the federal government, Solano said. A foreign born U.S. citizen at Willamette who was approved to study abroad recently contacted him with fear that they would be targeted when reentering the country, Solano said. 

Willamette has a few dozen international students in the U.S. on visas, less than 3% of the student body in recent years. The rate is lower than other universities in the Pacific Northwest, which allows it to give its international community a more individualized attention, Solano said. The Office of International Education works with vulnerable students to ensure they are notified promptly if their visa status changes and to plan how to best respond if their right to study in the U.S. is threatened, Solano said.

The university is also working with specialized lawyers to “understand what responses are available,” Thorsett said. He holds regular conversations with other university leaders and with elected officials, including Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Oregon, he said. “The university is thinking a lot about these issues.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Trump has signed several executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at universities, the military, police forces and in federal programs. DEI efforts at universities often include doing outreach to make the applicant pool more diverse, considering the experiences of underrepresented communities in research and hiring more faculty with experience studying systemic inequalities.

The orders, for example, threaten to “strip higher education accreditors of their accrediting authority if they don’t change their standards to align with the administration’s ideological priorities” such as abolishing DEI work, Feingold said. 

Accreditation “might seem like a minor bureaucratic detail” but is crucial to higher education institutions, she said. Universities such as Willamette rely on accreditation to access research grants, allow students to receive financial aid from the government and be able to issue valid diplomas and credits. 

While executive orders do not hold the authority that regular laws have, they can be disruptive to the operations of universities, Cotlar said. “The chaos is the point.”

The government incentivizes people to report universities if they perceive they discriminate against students in their DEI efforts, according to Solano. Willamette’s DEI work fully complies with federal and state anti-discrimination law, he said. 

The Trump administration also signed an executive order in February to restrict trans athletes to only compete in sports teams that align with their sex assigned at birth. Willamette shortly after modified its eligibility requirements to comply with the order to avoid being disqualified from NCAA championships. 

Thorsett joined more than 200 college leaders across the U.S. including the President of Chemeketa Community College Jessica Howard last week to sign a letter denouncing “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education.

Higher education institutions are “under attack” because they are crucial in the economy and how the country functions, Thorsett said. “The continued health of these institutions is really important for the future of this often imperfect, often flawed democracy.”

Melissa Buis, a political science professor at Willamette, also chimed in from the audience to give tips for students who would like to organize in opposition to the Trump administration. She said the administration’s policies against universities are relatively unpopular and encouraged students to “build a movement” by actively listening to others and coming together to work for the same goals.  

“Ordinary people need organizations and movements to be more powerful in a democracy,” Buis said.

Contact reporter Alan Cohen: [email protected].

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