Until March 25, 2025, Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey, might have assumed that when she wrote an op-ed in the school’s newspaper critical of her school's failure to stand up for the human rights of Palestinians, she was doing what people in the United States were free to do. Indeed, all who live in the U.S. might have thought the same thing, even if we disagree with the views she expressed in her piece.
Those assumptions were well grounded. The Washington Post notes, “The First Amendment protects the right to speak, protest and publish views, regardless of citizenship status.“ It quotes a 1953 Supreme Court decision that said: “’Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders.’”
