Let Her the Fuck Go

“Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.” - Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School, March 2025

He spoke in front of the entire journalism student body. He told them, plainly, that if they publish something the government or its online enforcers don’t like, there may be no institution, not the university, not the press, not the law—that can protect them from what comes next.

And now we’re watching what comes next.

Her name is Rümeysa Öztürk. She’s a Turkish national and a doctoral student at Tufts University, enrolled in the Child Study and Human Development program. On March 25, 2025, while walking near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, six masked, plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security detained her without warning.

She hasn’t been charged with any crime.

Oh wait—she wrote an editorial. A public one. A big one.

The article (see notes) called for the university to acknowledge alleged human rights violations and reconsider its affiliations with companies linked to the conflict in Gaza. After its publication, her personal information was listed on Canary Mission, a website that profiles individuals it claims promote anti-Israel sentiments. Do us all a favor and do not go to Canary Mission. Every single time to click on a place like that you give it oxygen.

Following her abduction by our country, she was detained. No warning. No phone call. No lawyer.

She was transported through multiple ICE detention centers before ending up in Louisiana. The Department of Homeland Security accused her of supporting Hamas, though no concrete evidence has been publicly presented. Her student visa was revoked without prior notification.

She’s still in custody.

Her friends describe her as “the sweetest, softest and kindest soul.”

Let’s go back to her education. She already holds degrees in Child Study and Human Development. Her academic focus is on the impact of social media on children and adolescent development. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College and was a Fulbright Scholar. I recognize that being smart and well-educated doesn’t automatically make you a good human—God knows, look at J.D. Vance. But her work so far in her life seems to me to show a greater range of good deeds than his. It also shows that she has discipline and is a vigilant worker.

And no, it’s not that nothing has happened since she was taken. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Ed Markey, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley have condemned the detention, calling for her release and the restoration of her visa. Tufts University President Sunil Kumar submitted a declaration supporting Öztürk, emphasizing the lack of evidence against her and affirming the university’s commitment to its Muslim students. Hopes and prayers? Spitting in the wind? Whatever you want to call it, it didn’t get the job done.

But here’s the thing—it’s been more weeks. And there are other stories just like this, and truth be told, we don’t know how many there are. Because not everybody has the agency or connections or friends to make sure their story is told. We have no idea how many people are in custody.

We know how she’s been treated. Öztürk has endured crowded and contaminated dorms, 45-minute asthma attacks without medicine, and uncontrollable coughing while being held in federal immigration detention in rural Louisiana. The living conditions in the facility are unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane, with overcrowded cells and frequent disruptions during the night making sleep impossible. She was not given adequate time or space for prayer. She was not provided food that respected her religious dietary needs. And her hijab was removed without her consent.

The bigger this gets, the quicker it gets fixed.

There are a lot of Substack accounts and articles going around—and I get sent many of them. Headlines about what Donald Trump said today. Another 100 versions of him dressed up like the Pope. A fresh take on whatever verbal grenade J.D. Vance lobbed before lunch. A meeting in the oval office.

That is not where we should be spending our precious time.

This. This is the story. A woman pulled off the street, locked up without charge, and left to suffer while the rest of us scroll. These are the stories we need to hold in the center of our attention. They don’t want us to. That’s the game. Distract. Inflame. Exhaust. Repeat.

So let’s not repost the cartoon of Trump in robes. Let’s not write about what he said unless it moves something forward. Let’s repost this. Let’s repost her. Let’s post her face. Let’s post her story. Let this be the one that cuts through.

The way we get this done is to post, yes, but pull things out of this article and find out other things and post short vignettes—one or two a day—and ask our friends to forward them and make this be the message: Let her the fuck go or charge her.

Call Tufts. Send the Tufts student newspaper a letter.

Her treatment since she’s been put in the detention center, she’s being housed in conditions that could usually be mistaken for one of those detention centers we read about in Third World countries. Here are a few things we know for sure;

    •    Overcrowded cells beyond capacity

    •    Lack of access to necessary medical care, including asthma medication

    •    Unsanitary and unsafe living conditions

    •    Frequent disruptions during the night, making it impossible to sleep

    •    Denial of religious accommodations for prayer and food

    •    Hijab forcibly removed without consent

So let’s commit to posting about her five times in the next five days. And continue the same five posts for the next five days. And ask others to do the same thing.

Let’s send her a letter.

If we’re going to march, let’s put her picture on a sign with two statements about what’s happened to her or who she is.

This is not the time to talk about what happened in the Oval Office with the Canadian Prime Minister, who we can all agree that if wishes were horses, he would be ours. That is not what’s going to fix this. Once we read one thing about it, we need to put it aside. They want us to focus on the daily dose of dishevelment they spend their time on. They want us to do that so people like her get pushed to the background of our minds.

We have to keep our eyes on the prize.

And while we’re at it, let’s recognize that the more people who sit at the Oval Office and speak truth to him, like what was done yesterday by Prime Minister Mark Carney, and the more he slumps down in his chair, the better off we’re going to be long-term. But that was Carney’s job. And, he did it well. Our job is to focus our time on specifics where big numbers get a little more agency.

I don’t know Rümeysa Öztürk. I don’t know J.D. Vance. Never met him. But if they were both running a race in the Derby, I’d pick her any day.

I am thinking so very carefully about what I read and how I spend my time now. I see myself falling into their trap over and over again. Every day, another explosion. Every desensitizing thing they do makes me more panicked. Watching The Handmaid’s Tale last night and feeling sick to my stomach through most of it because I can see that it is not out of the realm of possibility maybe isn’t a good thing for me to do anymore.

Or maybe it is because Elizabeth Moss, a.k.a. June, is a hero. And she’s scared. And every day, something hits her that she didn’t expect from people she thought she could trust. So really the only difference between her and me is that I never trusted these people.

I believe there’s a hero in each of us. I also believe that each of us is trying to find a way to do good as we go through this. To make a difference. And we haven’t found the playbook quite yet. But we’re getting closer.

Let’s start with this one human being, who is spending her life trying to help young children. Let’s get her the fuck out of there.

Eye on the prize.

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From The Tufts Daily

Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions

By Rumeysa Ozturk, Fatima Rahman, Genesis Perez and Nicholas Ambeliotis

Published Tuesday, March 26, 2024

On March 4, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed 3 out of 4 resolutions demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel. These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

Unfortunately, the University’s response to the Senate resolutions has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body. Graduate Students for Palestine joins Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Tufts Faculty and Staff Coalition for Ceasefire and Fletcher Students for Palestine to reject the University’s response. Although graduate students were not allowed by the University into the Senate meeting, which lasted for almost eight hours, our presence on campus and financial entanglement with the University via tuition payments and the graduate work that we do on grants and research makes us direct stakeholders in the University’s stance.

While an argument may be made that the University should not take political stances and should focus on research and intellectual exchange, the automatic rejection, dismissive nature and condescending tone in the University’s statement have caused us to question whether the University is indeed taking a stand against its own declared commitments to free speech, assembly and democratic expression. According to the Student Code of Conduct, “[a]ctive citizenship, including exercising free speech and engaging in protests, gatherings, and demonstrations, is a vital part of the Tufts community.” In addition, the Dean of Students Office has written, “[w]hile at times the exchange of controversial ideas and opinions may cause discomfort or even distress, our mission as a university is to promote critical thinking, the rigorous examination and discussion of facts and theories, and diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Why then is the University discrediting and disregarding its students who practice the very ideals of critical thinking, intellectual exchange and civic engagement that Tufts claims to represent?

The role of the TCU Senate resolutions is abundantly clear. The Senate’s resolutions serve as a “strong lobbying tool that expresses to the Tufts administration the wants and needs of the student body. They speak as a collective voice and are instrumental in enacting systemic changes.” In this case, the “systemic changes” that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.

This collective student voice is not without precedent. Today, the University may remember with pride its decision in February 1989 to divest from South Africa under apartheid and end its complicity with the then-racist regime. However, we must remember that the University divested up to 11 years after some of its peers. For instance, the Michigan State University Board of Regents passed resolutions to end its complicity with Apartheid South Africa as early as 1978. Had Tufts heeded the call of the student movement in the late 1970s, the University could have been on the right side of history sooner.

We reject any attempt by the University or the Office of the President to summarily dismiss the role of the Senate and mischaracterize its resolution as divisive. The open and free debate demonstrated by the Senate process (exemplified by the length, open notice and substantive exchange in the proceedings and the non-passing of one of the proposed resolutions), together with the serious organizing efforts of students, warrant credible self-reflection by the Office of the President and the University. We, as graduate students, affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people and reject the University’s mischaracterization of the Senate’s efforts.

The great author and civil rights champion James Baldwin once wrote: “The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which [they are] being educated.” As an educator, President Kumar should embrace efforts by students to evaluate “diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Furthermore, the president should trust in the Senate’s rigorous and democratic process and the resolutions that it has achieved.

We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.

This op-ed was written by Nick Ambeliotis (CEE, ‘25), Fatima Rahman (STEM Education, ‘27), Genesis Perez (English, ‘27) and Rumeysa Ozturk (CSHD, ‘25) and is endorsed by 32 other Tufts School of Engineering and Arts and Sciences Graduate Students.