With the risk of a travel ban on the horizon, New York colleges and universities are urging international students to cut short their winter breaks and return to campus before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Cornell University, The New School and the University of Rochester are among the schools in the Empire State set to kick off the spring semester in the days immediately following Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. In recent weeks, because of concerns over the incoming administration, all three universities have alerted students to possible consequences of waiting until the first days of classes to travel back to the United States.
“A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after the inauguration. The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration,” Cornell’s Office of Global Learning told students. “It is a good idea for international students, faculty and staff from the above countries to be back in the U.S. in advance of the semester.”
Cornell included on its list 13 countries that were previously subject to travel bans, plus predicted others, including China and India, that could soon be added. International students from 131 countries make up 26% of Cornell’s student body, according to university data.
Exactly how the new presidential administration will enact travel restrictions remains to be seen. On the campaign trail, Trump said he could reestablish travel bans and even extend them to more countries. During his last administration, the president-elect restricted entry from several predominantly Muslim countries that left some international students stranded and prompted hundreds of college presidents to sign an open letter against the ban.
Amid last year’s pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations, Trump also floated the idea of revoking the visas of student protesters, whom he described as “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
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A pro-Palestinian protest at The New School in Manhattan earlier this year. (Getty)
Toward the end of the previous semester, The New School recommended that international students “strongly consider returning to the United States prior to the start of classes, which coincides with the presidential Inauguration Day of Jan. 20, 2025.”
The New School, based in Greenwich Village near Union Square, enrolls more than 3,500 international students and researchers from upward of 100 countries, university data show. While the new head of the university stopped short of predicting what next year will hold, he said his team is getting ready.
“Given what is currently known, it is reasonable to prepare for the possibility that the incoming administration will seek to implement immigration policy that may well target people from specific countries or undocumented members of our community,” Joel Towers, who became president of The New School this fall, told students.
“If that is the case, we will respond, as we have in the past, to threats to our international and undocumented students, with access to support and resources, collective advocacy to oppose actions that threaten higher education, and programming to help our community stay abreast of the issues.”
New York University hosted more than 27,200 international students last school year, according to a new report. But NYU, also located in Greenwich Village, where Donald Trump’s son Barron is a freshman, did not respond to questions from the Daily News over the past week.
Other New York colleges have encouraged international students to return early, though their communications did not explicitly reference the presidential transition. Those included some SUNY campuses, collectively serving some 20,300 international students, including the University at Buffalo and Binghamton University.
At Columbia University, which resumes classes for the spring semester the day after the inauguration, two senior officials sent a yearly email encouraging “international travelers to return to Columbia’s campus in advance of this semester’s start date to avoid any potential travel delays.” The university, based in Morningside Heights, is home to more than 23,200 international students from 162 countries.
According to college newspaper the Columbia Daily Spectator, at a meeting last week with faculty, staff and students, President Katrina Armstrong said the university is forming at least 13 working groups to respond to “challenges” that could arise under Trump, including one related to international students.
