An Open Letter from Tufts Daily Alumni Calling for the Release of Rümeysa Öztürk
Past editors of the student newspaper that published Öztürk's op-ed speak out against her detention
Last year, Rümeysa Öztürk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily, the student newspaper of the university where she is a graduate student, and which I served as editor-in-chief in 1988. Her opinion piece appears to be the sole basis for her current detention by the federal government.
Student journalists who worked at The Tufts Daily are releasing this open letter to call for her release.
An Open Letter to the Administration
To Pres. Trump and Secretary Rubio,
We write to you as former editors and leaders of The Tufts Daily, the student newspaper in which Rümeysa Öztürk expressed her views about the conflict in Gaza. As past and current journalists, we call on you to restore her previous, lawful immigration status; to free her and others wrongly denied immigration status for exercising their rights; and to comply with the law, traditions, and constitutional principles that have made such measures aberrations in our nation’s history. In America, everyone should be afforded the constitutional right to due process.
Targeting Öztürk does nothing to protect Jewish people or Israel. Members of Tufts’ Jewish community have explained why this is.
History’s verdict on Öztürk’s unlawful detention is already evident. History saw and did not forget when even some of this country’s best-loved presidents made similar mistakes. There is no reason to think history will make an exception for this administration, at a time when infringements of fundamental rights cannot even be justified by war, as past presidents did.
We believe this administration capable of acknowledging presidential overreach. Mr. President, you rightly criticized the second Bush administration for its war in Iraq.
Mr. Secretary, you have already tacitly acknowledged — by resorting to false implications about her — that Öztürk’s actual actions came nowhere near the legal thresholds for abrogating her rights. You suggested without evidence that she had disrupted the Tufts campus. Tufts officials refuted it.
If you believed her constitutionally protected speech voided her constitutional rights, you could have made that claim. To your credit, you have not even attempted to do so.
Few regimes successfully suppress freedom of speech. Fewer do it for long. None survive the judgment of history.
Even without history’s assessment of past presidents, we already know the verdict on the current detentions, because history’s verdict will be rendered by the kids of today. And they are already going on record.
The student editors of The Tufts Daily published Öztürk’s article. They stand by it today, calling the opinion piece that she co-authored “an exercise of free speech — her fulfillment of a fundamental American value.” They have condemned her detention. So has the Student Press Law Center.
And we can be confident that their principles will not falter over the years, because we once stood in their shoes and those same principles remain intact in us years and decades later.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. Protecting America requires protecting the principles that define it. We ask you to do so without delay.
Sincerely,
Jamie Bronstein (J90 F91), Tufts Daily reporter, Tufts Observer features editor
Art Charlton (A82), Tufts Daily founding member, editor-in-chief
Bill Zuill (A86), Tufts Daily news editor
Larry Azer (A93), Tufts Daily executive business director
Howard Simons (A86), Tufts Daily executive editor
Julie Beglin (A89), Tufts Daily editor-in-chief
Jonathan Larsen (A88), Tufts Daily editor-in-chief
This letter will be updated in the event of new signatories. (Tufts Daily alumni can contact me directly to request to join the list.)
This post and the letter can be distributed and quoted in part or in their entirety, with appropriate attribution requested. Thank you.
- Jonathan
I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC, CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. And The Tufts Daily. You can subscribe to get my reporting and commentary here:
Thank you for being the voice of Truth and Honor, in this time of grave danger and madness. Those who are a part of The Tufts Daily and the University are what we hope every University must strive for and be. Principles matter.
Good letter! Only thing I would change is: “ In America, everyone should be afforded the constitutional right to due process.” I would change should be to IS.