Some Americans suffer from political amnesia. They denounce efforts by the Trump administration to deport foreign student visa-holders for supporting Hamas and disrupting university campuses, forgetting that the Carter administration did almost the exact same thing.
No one called Jimmy Carter a fascist authoritarian who “abducted” or “disappeared” foreign students simply for engaging in free speech. But many seem eager to level these incendiary accusations against Trump.
Both before and after Iranians seized the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, taking dozens of Americans hostage, well-organized groups of Iranian students were protesting in the U.S. over the Carter administration’s support for the Shah of Iran. With more than 54,000 Iranian students in the U.S. in 1978, Iranian visa-holders constituted the largest block of international students
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