A Fox News host latched onto one of the GOP’s latest talking points on Wednesday, calling for the deportation of international students who protest Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The conversation on Wednesday’s Outnumbered centered on a lawsuit three Jewish students filed against New York University, alleging the school failed to protect them against “the age-old virus of antisemitism.”
“These universities—particularly these elite universities—either they have knowingly admitted students brimming with dreams of global intifada or they have indoctrinated these students into this hate cult,” Fox Business host Dagen McDowell said on Wednesday’s Outnumbered. “It’s one or the other, because this is what’s happened on these college campuses.”
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McDowell continued: “Until these universities begin seriously punishing these students either through expulsion or even deportation, which MIT refused to do—you know, MIT protected students who violated the terms of their visas.”
McDowell cited the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology’s Nov. 9 decision to partially suspend students who occupied a campus building to stage a pro-Palestinian “die-in” last week. President Sally Kornbluth said the decision to partially suspend the students from non-academic events instead of a full suspension was made over “serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues.”
“They are no longer the best and the brightest going to these Ivy League schools, they're the middling, mutton-headed, and maybe murderous,” she said.
The Fox host’s rhetoric directly echoes what various GOP presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Tim Scott have urged since last month. Trump said during a campaign event in October that he would revoke the visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners” enrolled at U.S. universities, while DeSantis alleged those students shared “common cause with Hamas.”
