DeSantis Wants to Kick Pro-Hamas Students Out of College

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is upping the ante regarding Hamas sympathizers in the United States, saying that foreign college students who support the militant organization should have their visas revoked.

Following the October 7 attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis in the biggest act of aggression on its soil on decades, some Americans at institutions of higher learning expressed support for Hamas—a terrorist organization as designated by the United States government. Many have faced career-based repercussions due to voicing their opinions.

Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza as of Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, citing the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel. Another roughly 10,900 people have been wounded or buried underneath rubble, dead or alive.

"It raises a larger issue: What the hell is going on in American universities nowadays?" DeSantis said on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. "This would not have happened during World War II when the Japanese attacked us. You would not have seen—you did not see—student groups going out there and celebrating that. Remember, Americans were massacred, too. It wasn't just Israelis, and Americans are still being held hostage as well as Israelis."

He called it an institutional sickness that wouldn't have occurred two or three decades ago, adding that the value of a Harvard resume doesn't mean as much as it did then.

"Now, you see that resume—to me, I run the other way," he said. "I'm assuming that there's a lot of problems embedded into whatever's been fed into that student because of how toxic the culture has gotten [in] our universities.

"What I will say is this: Any of those students who are here on visas, those visas should be canceled, and they should be repatriated back to their home country. That's a no-brainer. Why would we welcome people into this country who are totally hostile to basic American decency and values?"

Two visas currently exist for foreigners who want to study at U.S. colleges and universities, known as the F-1 and M-1 visas.

The F-1 visa allows people to enter the U.S. as full-time students at an accredited college, university, seminary, conservatory, academic high school, elementary school or other academic institution, or in a language training program.

The M-1 visa includes students in vocational or other nonacademic programs, other than language training.

Schools like Harvard and New York University (NYU) have been in the spotlight based on views expressed by some of their students and groups on campus.

Following Hamas' initial attack that reignited the conflict, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a statement signed by at least 35 student groups that blamed Israel.

"We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence," the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine said in a joint statement posted on social media.

The statement received plenty of ridicule, notably from Harvard alumni whose views are antithetical to what the statement espoused. They included former Harvard President Larry Summers, who is Jewish and wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the university's silence made it "appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel."

In the past 24 hours, the Wexner Foundation ended its 34-year relationship with the institution and its Harvard Kennedy School, cutting off all financial and programmatic ties. The foundation condemned the university's response to Hamas' attack as a dismal failure.

Pro-Hamas statements have had career repercussions for some future graduates, too.

Neil Barr, managing partner of the prestigious law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, told staff via email that it had rescinded job offers to three law students in leadership positions in Harvard and Columbia University groups that issued such statements.

At NYU, a law student and president of the Student Bar Association lost a job offer at another law firm after publishing a newsletter saying, "Israel bears full responsibility" for the Hamas attack, adding: "I will not condemn Palestinian resistance."

"If you look at what they did, what the Hamas terrorists did—as bad as Al-Queda and ISIS in some of their worst moments—I think this has even reached a new low," DeSantis told Kelly. "The idea that you would go out and celebrate that as a good thing, that is absolutely the type of person that you should not want to hire. I would not hire any of those people who were doing that."

DeSantis recently sparred with a would-be voter in New Hampshire on how attacks against innocent Palestinians differed from attacks on innocent Israelis. The back-and-forth resulted with the man saying he had planned to vote for DeSantis, but not anymore.

Newsweek reached out to the DeSantis campaign, Harvard and NYU via email for comment.

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