Reports are growing of international students being notified that their visas have been revoked and are ordered to leave the country immediately.
WNIJ has reported on the statement made by Northern Illinois University President Lisa Freeman reaffirming the university’s support for its international community.
“I did want every member of our international nonresident scholar, community, students, faculty and staff," she said in a recent interview, "to understand how important we think they are to our community.”
This is just one of the issues that universities and colleges are figuring out under the Trump Administration.
President Donald Trump’s executive order closing the U.S. Department of Education continues to spur uncertainty on the future of federal programs.
NIU has been in line to receive the designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution, as determined by the Higher Education Act. The government’s page on Hispanic Serving Institutions appears inactive.
NIU has met the main criteria which is to have a Latino student enrollment of 25 percent. When a college or university receive the identification, they are eligible to compete for federal funding that can be used for all students not just Hispanic students, according to Excelencia in Education.
Despite the risks to the program, Freeman said the university continues to support Hispanic students as they do all students.
“Our commitment," she said, "has not changed, and so, and it's not going to change.”
The Trump Administration is pushing schools to remove Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, programs, or risk losing federal funding. Freeman affirmed the school’s support for it.
“We are not changing our commitment to our core values,” Freeman said.
NIU’s school paper, The Northern Star, reported that NIU replaced a web page titled “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at NIU,” to - quote - “Inclusive Excellence” in March as Trump issued his executive order calling for removal of DEI programs at schools.
“I think," said Freeman, "[that] changing the words we use to communicate about some of the work is something that we were going to do with or without the change in administration."
Freeman’s biggest concern is the notion pushed by critics that getting rid of DEI will then return a focus to - quote - “merit excellence.”
“Merit is an excellence or what happens when you match talent with opportunity," she said, "and those are the things that we value. The programs that we have under the umbrella of “Inclusive Excellence” are the things that allow us to match talent with opportunity to develop excellence.”
She said amid concerns of cuts to research and other activities, she’s most worried about Trump’s plan to move student funding programs to the Small Business Administration.
“I think," Freeman said, "we want to make sure that people who have the knowledge and experience to run those programs have an opportunity to do so and continue to do it without disruption.”
She said more than half of students receive some form of financial aid.
And while the university navigates doubts about federal funding, it faces a $30 million budget deficit.
In previous remarks she said Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s three percent proposed increase in state funding for higher education is not enough.
When asked if she advocates for new tax revenues or cuts in other areas, she said “It's not my job to comment on state economic policy, but it is my job to advocate for the importance of public higher education and the importance of our university.”
Illinois legislators are trying to figure out the state budget too, also in light of many factors as yet undetermined in front of them.
