Following ICE’s detention of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and the sudden revocation of hundreds of student visas across the country, professor and novelist Sheila Sundar joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the targeting of international university students, especially those involved in pro-Palestine speech or protests, by the Trump administration. Sundar reflects on a childhood spent partly among intellectuals travelling between countries, and explains how this led to her recent novel, Habitations, in which the protagonist leaves her home in South India for graduate school at Columbia. Sundar discusses international students’ contributions to American intellectual life and how the current assault on diversity damages academia. She also talks about how work-restrictive policies treat international students as “takers” who are not welcome to integrate fully into American society. Sundar reads from Habitations.

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This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Hunter Murray and Vanessa Watkins.

Selected Readings:

Sheila Sundar

Others:

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